


By Your Side I'll Stay (Forever If That's Okay)

by MariniDagger



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Eventual Romance, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Light Angst, Mostly fluff and bad jokes, Slow Burn, and lots of pining, couple of flashbacks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-24
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-07-18 00:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 33,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7292626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MariniDagger/pseuds/MariniDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With the last weeks of college creeping up on them, Octavia and Raven are feeling the stress: finals, graduation, job applications, lingering feelings for your best friend.</p><p>And a possible divorce hanging over their heads.</p><p>Because sometimes, marrying someone for convenience doesn't always wind up so convenient.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, that's been a long enough hiatus from posting for me. Kicking off the return with an Octaven AU with a side of Clexa. Feel free to bombard me with comments/feedback/suggestions for this one.
> 
> Updates changed to every Tuesday.
> 
> commandermari.tumblr.com

It’s not the getting caught part that surprises her. No, Raven spent the whole night waiting for that to happen, from the second they found the doors in the south wing of the art building unlocked and all but inviting her and Clarke inside, all the way until she was typing in the code to disable the alarm system in the Glassbox Studio. In hindsight, she should have known the code would have changed since the last time she went up there on an official university sponsored event. She knows she could have clipped the right wires to shut it down completely, if it wasn’t for Clarke harping over her shoulder the entire time. The girl doesn’t give her enough credit sometimes.

Maybe if they hadn’t spent their whole creep and crawl into the studio bickering over the fastest way out of the building, they would have noticed the campus security patrolling the hall, catching sight of the open door. Maybe if Clarke hadn’t taken a full 30 seconds to bask in the glory of her soon-to-be stolen art work hanging on the wall of the gallery, they could have booked it out of the room and hidden out of sight. And maybe if Raven had just sacrificed Clarke and her damn painting, she could have slipped past the guard and left Clarke in the dust, not spending her night sitting in a holding cell.

She blames her ego. And she blames Clarke for knowing about her ego. All it took was some buttering up and throwing the words “genius mastermind” around in conversation to get Raven in on the plan. Honestly, she’d be a little offended if Clarke picked anyone else to join her on her adventure. But their plan still failed.

Of course Clarke’s already gone. She’s lucky Raven has enough pull with security, her reputation as a decent enough student life intern giving her some sway with the officers on duty that night, keeping them from getting the real police involved and slapping a breaking and entering charge on both their records. All they got was a slap on the wrist and a night in the holding cell until a responsible party came by to pick each of them up.

And of course, for Clarke, that means Lexa, the most annoying responsible party to ever walk the face of the Earth. They weren’t even in the cell for half an hour before one of the guards pulled Clarke out, taking her up front and dropping her in Lexa’s care. Knowing Lexa, she answered the phone halfway through the first ring, already preparing a full blown defense when she heard the words “Clarke Griffin” and “in custody,” a plan that probably overlooked the Raven Reyes of it all. Damn Lexa and her extra lawyer ass.

Raven grumbles to herself, leaning against the concrete wall. Can’t even be spared a pillow or a blanket until someone comes for her. She hopes it’s not Sinclair. The last thing she needs is him chiding her for her and Clarke’s criminal ways, or for not putting all those years of helping him rewire scrap electronics to good use to short out the alarm system. Clarke better be coming back for her, no way is she staying here through the night. She’s not cut out for prison and sleeping on concrete benches, not when she’s got a memory foam mattress cover in her dorm room.

“Boots on the ground, Reyes.”

The guard that booked her and Clarke in the cell shows up at the door, heavy jangling of keys in the lock seeping through the tiny window in the middle of the door. She swings the door open, Raven nearly bolting out of the room on her own, a mental map of the building as they were hauled in still sitting fresh on her mind. An arm cuts off her escape route, the guard’s hand wrapping around her bicep and keeping Raven by her side as they head down the hall.

“You’re lucky. We finally got a hold of someone.”

Not Sinclair. Anyone but Sinclair. The guard leads her towards the lobby of the station, her partner sitting behind the desk, handing a clipboard to someone just out of view. Raven clenches her eyes shut, dreading to see who’s on the other side of the counter.

“Only took about five phone calls for your wife to pick up.”

It’s not the getting caught and arrested and bailed out over the course of four hours that surprises her. It’s walking into the lobby as the word “wife” falls out of the officer’s mouth and finding Octavia staring back at her.

Maybe she should have specified on that whole “anyone but Sinclair” thing. The only thing remotely close to sucking as bad as getting bailed out by her dad is getting bailed out by her best friend.

Her best friend who happens to be her roommate.

Her best friend who happens to be her roommate and happens to be the person she’s been pining after for a solid year now.

And now she happens to apparently be her wife.

“I don’t know what you numbskulls are talking about,” Raven jumps at the chance to clear the air, Octavia looking just as surprised at the words coming out of the officer’s mouth. “That’s not my wife.”

“Really, Rae? I’m a ‘that’ now?” Octavia closes the distance between them, socking Raven in the arm for the dismissal. Before Raven even gets a chance to rub at the now aching spot, Octavia’s pulling her into a hug, mumbling into her shoulder. “You okay? Thought I was gonna have to start hawking organs to bail you out.”

“Put your kidneys back in, I’m fine,” Octavia pulls away, giving Raven a once over, looking for any signs of damage. Aside from an aching knee from creeping up six flights of stairs and a heart flipping from Octavia wrapping her hand around her wrist, she’s not in bad shape. “I’d be more fine if someone cleared up this wife thing for me.”

 The officer at the desk takes the clipboard sitting on the desk, flipping through the pages and trailing his finger down one of the sheets. He pushes his glasses further up his nose and leans in closer to the page.

“Are you Octavia Blake?” Octavia nods, and the officer shifts his attention to Raven. “And you’re Raven Reyes?”

“Don’t you already have a copy of my license, student ID, employee ID, fingerprints, and judging by how long it took you to process me, a full sequence of my DNA, to prove that?”

An elbow flies into Raven’s ribs, courtesy of Octavia. Maybe copping an attitude with the officers about to let her go might not be the best idea, especially not at 3 in the morning with Octavia standing next to her looking like she’s ready to strangle someone for interrupting her sleep.

“Assuming that’s a yes, then I have right here that the emergency contact for one Raven Reyes, provided by your employer’s information down at the student life center, is one Octavia Blake. Relationship? Wife. Says it right here.”

Raven steals the clipboard away, staring at the spot the officer keeps tapping with the tip of his pen. It’s spelled out right in front of them, bold letters and all. Not roommates. Not best friends since they were kids, but wives. Some genius down at the office must have screwed up her paperwork at the start of the year, nobody catching onto it until now. Probably Murphy, the smug little asshole receptionist for the student life offices. He’s been threatening to get her back for loosening the screws on the wheels of his chair for weeks now, thinking this sad attempt at a joke would be decent enough payback. Joke’s on him, all it did was get her out of lock up early, even if it means heading back to her room with an incredibly pissed off roommate. Roommate, not wife.

“Look, I’m telling you, she’s not my-“

The officer holds up his hand, rubbing at his temples.

“I don’t care if she’s your wife, your sister, your grandmother, the random cashier you’ve said five words to at the liquor store,” Raven and Octavia share a sideways glance, wondering just how often that last one actually happens when someone gets bailed out. “All I care is that she’s taking you out of this building before I change my mind and decide to get real charges pressed on you and your friend. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Octavia signs off with a mock salute before clamping her hand over Raven’s mouth, the other pulling her by the wrist out of the building. Never before has Raven been so thankful to be in the freezing night air, away from the confines of that cramped room. Her joy gets cut short as Octavia walks away, heading towards the bike rack in front of the station.

“Oh come on, you rode The Monstrosity out here?”

Raven groans as she follows, finding Octavia’s beloved purple bike chained to bike rack at the bottom of the stairs. The thing’s a monster, and Octavia’s Doctor Frankenstein, salvaging parts from scrap yards and yard sales to put it together piece by piece. Raven’s not sure there’s a single piece on it coming from the original model, or the same brand of bike. The handlebar grips don’t even match, one a solid grey foam grip, the other a heavy rubber with black and red flames wrapping around it.

“Either you’re riding the handlebars or you’re walking home.”

Octavia unchains the bike and climbs on the seat, waiting for Raven to go ahead and climb on. Raven knows she’s bluffing about walking home. It’s three miles back to their dorm on the other side of campus, and no matter how pissed off she might be for having to ride that far and back, she won’t make her best friend trek that far on foot, especially not in the middle of the night. Even though she knows Octavia won’t leave her stranded, Raven’s knee aches at the thought of it.

“Hop on, wife.”

Octavia moves her hand, letting Raven climb up on the bar. Her hands settle on the sides of her legs, Octavia’s arms on the grips keeping her steady. They take a few seconds to get their bearings, Octavia clicking on the light clamped at the front of her wheel, still probably trying to fight the urge to punch Raven in the face for dragging her out across campus in the dead of night.

“I’m going to kill whoever put that on my file.”

“Murphy?”

“Most likely. Thanks, by the way,” Raven says as Octavia pushes away from the curb, looking back over her shoulder to study her friend’s face. She’s calmer, less likely to ride them both into one of the construction ditches around campus. “Kind of started thinking I’d be stuck there forever.”

“What happened to Clarke? They left a message saying you got busted with her.”

“I’ll give you one guess.”

“Lexa?” Raven nods as Octavia loops around the police station, coasting them down a small hill leading back to the main road. Octavia shakes her head, not surprised by Clarke’s swift rescue. “Figures.”

“I’m surprised Paul Blart back there didn’t mistake them for a married couple. Should have seen how hard Lexa started crying. You would have thought Clarke just got out from a 20 year stint in Guantanamo.”

“Disgusting.”

“Even better, Lexa showed up in bunny pajama pants. I’ve never seen her look like a bigger nerd in her life.”

“Seriously? I had one chance to mock Lexa and I missed it?” Raven nods, Octavia dropping her head on Raven’s back, groaning in disappointment. They’ve seen Lexa make her opponent cry during university sponsored debates. They’ve seen her rip a protestor preaching the sins of same sex relationships a new one right in front of the library. But none of that compares to seeing Lexa in all her badass future lawyer glory, turning into a sobbing, glasses sporting, purple bunny pajama wearing wreck over her delinquent girlfriend.

 They reach the edge of the main campus, the stretch of building all silent in the middle of the night. Construction zone pocked roads dwindle away, shifting into a two lane road with sidewalks lining lawns of grass outside the buildings. The sprinklers outside the political science building douse the pavement in water, the wheels of Octavia’s bike kicking up tiny blades of grass. They come out on the other side with mist drenched legs, splatters of mud and grass speckling across their skin.

Octavia shifts on her seat, the movement sending the bike wobbling as she digs through her back pocket. She hands her phone to Raven, a slew of messages from Clarke and Lexa popping up on the screen. Raven unlocks it before Octavia can even ask, skimming through the messages as they ride through the center quad.

“Speaking of Mrs. and Mrs. Heart Eyes,” Raven tucks the phone back in her own pocket, having seen enough of the texts to get the gist. Lexa’s mad, Clarke’s feeling guilty, and the two of them are in a world of shit with their friends. “They want to meet tomorrow morning and talk about this.”

“Oh, great. Lexa yelling at me first thing in the morning, then Indra blowing her whistle in my ear all afternoon. Just like freshman year,” Lexa dating their best friend was bad enough, with all their disgusting displays of affection. But Octavia had it worse, spending her entire first year on the Polis soccer team with Lexa as her captain. Raven nearly cried laughing at the look of horror on her face when she realized the hot philosophy TA Clarke started dating was the same person that had her running laps around the field every day at sunrise and sunset. “I’m surprised they’re not sitting in our dorm waiting for us.”

“They’re probably too busy having sappy, emotional, reunion sex.”

Octavia shudders, steering them between the psychology and education buildings. The lights from their dorm complex shine a few blocks away, Raven’s bed tucked in the corner of their room all but calling out to her. Back to her bed, where if she’s lucky, she’ll get a few hours of sleep before facing the one-woman firing squad.

“Eww, I just gave myself a horrible mental image.”

“Hey, at least yours is just mental. I’ve got too many compromising, but also impressive, positions of those two permanently seared into my eyeballs,” Raven’s nearly had her emergency copy of their apartment key revoked, waltzing in the place looking to steal a carton of ice cream, only to find the two of them taking advantage of every flat surface in the apartment. Like the couch they all sit on during movie nights. Or the counter Octavia helps cook on for their misfit group of friends’ Christmas dinner every year. Or the table they eat said Christmas dinner off of. “Those soccer workouts left Lexa pretty flexible, gotta admit.”

“Stop being such a perv,” Raven just leans against Octavia’s shoulder, tilting her head back far enough to throw a wink at her. She shakes her head, a smirk still slipping through. She’s definitely never questioned if Octavia’s gotten the same result from years on the team, definitely never imagined finding out for herself on one of their beds, and definitely not thinking about it right now as they pass through the gate to their dorm, stopping at one of the bike racks outside their building. “I should have left you there overnight.”

“Wow, my own wife, turning against me in my hour of need.”

“Seriously, get that thing figured out. I don’t need my graduation stuff getting screwed over because my ‘wife’ has a library fine she refuses to pay.”

“Hey, your ‘wife’s fine’ is bullshit,” Raven mocks Octavia’s air quotes, knowing damn well she turned in that micro-mechanics book last year, that the university was just trying to squeeze another couple of bucks out of her. Like that tuition hike right before she started her graduate program wasn’t enough of a rip off, now they’re trying to tack on the full cost of the book and a processing fee. “And don’t worry about it. I have it handled.”

Octavia leads them through the entrance of the building, letting Raven take the lead towards the elevators. They step out onto the fourth floor, feet dragging as they make their way to their room at the end of the hall. Octavia swings the door open, Raven barely making it over the threshold before Octavia’s flinging a blanket over herself, burying her face in her mountain of pillows.

“Knocking out already?”

Octavia peeks out from her cocoon, watching Raven as she sits across from her on her own bed, tugging her jacket and boots off. She knows she’s dying to hear it, dying to know why she came home to an empty dorm and a note saying not to tell Lexa she and Clarke went out together, knowing their friend would come knocking the second she noticed her girlfriend missing. And Raven’s dying to tell it, knowing the one person who will appreciate it with minimal judgement is lying right across from her.

“Indra’s practice literally ripped my soul from my body. Give me the full rundown tomorrow?”

Her sleep heavy voice comes out muffled by one of her pillows. Raven doesn’t blame her, seeing the texts from her roommate about losing count of how many laps her coach sent the team running and not even an ice bath doing a thing to soothe her aches minutes before pulling off her near heist with Clarke. Throw in two cross campus bike rides, one with another body in tow, and Raven’s surprised she’s even conscious enough to carry on a conversation.

“I’ll even pay for your coffee.”

“This is why I love you,” The words slip out from the pile of blankets as Raven stands, crossing their room towards their bathroom. She almost misses the last part, catching the door before it closes on Octavia. “You’re still a shitty wife though.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys for the support so far!  
> Keep it coming!
> 
> commandermari.tumblr.com

“Uh oh,” Octavia sings as she and Raven walk into the coffee shop on campus. It’s mostly empty, save for a few unlucky saps with classes at eight in the morning, pumping caffeine in their veins to try to stay awake. That, and people walking to their friend induced death after a night of run-ins with the campus’ pathetic excuse for law enforcement. “Lexa’s already got the lawyer face on.”

Tucked at a table in the far corner, Raven spies Lexa already watching them, jaw grinding back and forth as she and Octavia make their way over. Clarke looks worse for wear, tugging her beanie over her eyes and laying her head on the table, the simple act of picking up the coffee cup next to her too much to even attempt.

“Any requests for your final meal?” Raven asks as they walk up to the counter, feeling Lexa’s stare with every step they take. Some poor minimum wage earning barista is going to have to clean their bodies from the floor by the time she’s done with them. Might as well make their final moments worth it.

“My usual,” Raven knows that means a green tea frap with coconut milk, possibly the only thing Octavia’s ever ordered in their years of friendship that she won’t dare try to steal a sip of. Why the girl can’t just drink black coffee with a handful of sugar packets, she doesn’t know, but part of her swears it’s a conspiracy against her and her food stealing habits. “Doughnut too? Considering it’s your fault my short life is coming to an end.”

“Please, I made the last 14 years of your life amazing,” Octavia stays quiet, refusing to admit victory. Raven opts against gloating this time around, the barista looking a little unnerved by Lexa still glaring at them from across the shop. “You can admit it later.”

“Oh, shut up.”

 

Lexa folds her hands across the table as the new pair sits across from them, their own drinks in hand and well out of her reach.

“Looking good, Lex. See you traded in the fuzzy pj’s for jeans this morning?”

“Not funny, Raven,” She’s right, it’s still hilarious, even hours later. If Raven had a picture, she’d frame it and put it on the wall between her and Octavia’s beds, taking it along with her after leaving the dorms and throwing it over the fireplace of her mansion one day. “I don’t see the humor in having to bail my girlfriend out of jail.”

“Yeah, you don’t see the humor in much things, do you?” Octavia mumbles through a bite of her doughnut, one she nearly chokes on when Lexa shoots her the evil eye across the table. Raven shakes her head, wondering how the two ever made it through a year of being teammates without any serious altercations besides a well-aimed soccer ball flying towards Octavia’s head and a surprise visit to Clarke’s mom in the ER to make sure she didn’t have a concussion.

“Campus security is far from jail. I’ve met mall cops that have more authority than them.”

“She’s right,” Clarke perks up, wincing at the sunlight streaming through the windows. She fumbles for her cup, downing the coffee in almost a single go. Lexa slides her cup closer to Clarke, fearing a caffeine withdrawn girlfriend more than her own lack of coffee. “Raven’s the reason the three of us can’t go to the outlet mall anymore.”

“Why is this the first time I’m hearing about this?” Lexa looks between the three friends, years of dating Clarke allowing her to fill books with stories about the trio and their adventures together.

“Because it involves an RC car, a strip of Black Cats, and Raven and Clarke’s least favorite manager at the Bath and Body they worked at senior year. Hardly something you’d approve of.”

Octavia skimps out the details for Lexa’s sake, knowing the full extent of the story might actually make her spontaneously combust. She doesn’t need to know about the back-up plan involving Clarke’s little brother Aden’s Nerf gun collection, a couple of 8 shot Roman candles, and a vantage point from the roof of the mall overlooking the parking lot near the store.

“How are none of you in prison yet?”

“Maybe because _someone_ ,” Clarke slams her cup down, taking Lexa’s bagel from her napkin. “Thought calling my mom and telling her I got arrested was a good idea. I got to stay up having her give me a lecture at 3 in the morning about ethics and how good doctors don’t run underground art theft rings on campus. Scared the criminal right out of me.”

“Your mom does realize you dropped out of pre-med freshman year, right?” Raven asks the question on everyone’s mind. It’s not like she and Clarke are in their last years of grad school, ready to walk across the stage and get those fancy diplomas for their masters in mechanical engineering and painting and drawing.

“Yeah, we haven’t had that conversation yet,” Clarke tears at her stolen bagel, shrugging off the three jaws dropping on the table around her. “Don’t start, you guys are supposed to back me up on this in case she actually decides to kill me.”

“You might be safer in jail.” Raven adds. At least Abby can’t get to her for using years of her tuition checks to take art classes and faking transcripts to look like she was passing every pre-med class with flying colors. That’s bound to be a thrilling post-graduation party to be at.

“See, Lex? Someone supports me being a vigilante for starving art students.”

“Of course Raven does, she’s your partner in crime.”

“Okay, is someone going to explain to me what happened, or do I need to go bribe some rent-a-cops to give me the incident report on Batman and Robin over here?”

Octavia waits with open arms for one of them to speak up. Her conversation with Raven that morning had been quick, not stretching beyond the younger girl hammering on the door telling her to hurry up and pee so she could shower. Even their bike ride to the coffee shop had been silent, Raven fighting to keep her eyes open and warn Octavia of any oncoming pedestrians with just a few hours of sleep.

Looking to Clarke and Raven, Lexa leans back in her chair, folding her hands on her lap, like she’s waiting to see how the two of them try to explain their way out of this one. Raven’s not sure where to start, this story beating out almost all of the others, even the Bath and Body incident and the mass casualty of signature body sprays and candles.

“Well, you know how my painting got chosen for that exhibit in the Glassbox?”

“You mean the one that’s very obviously Lexa’s body wrapped in a sheet with a touch of side boob?”

Raven and Octavia spent a good fifteen minutes in front of the painting the night of the gallery opening, cocking their heads to the side, taking steps forwards and backwards trying to figure out who the model was. The connection didn’t click until Lexa and Clarke turned to walk away from them, the slit in the back of Lexa’s shirt revealing a span of shoulders and skin almost identical to the one they’d been staring at since they got to the gallery.

“I told you everyone would know it was me, Clarke!”

“Octavia only knows because she’s seen you naked in the locker room enough times. It’s not even a full side boob.”

“I recognized it, too.” Raven chimes in, not helping Lexa’s argument at all. At least Clarke had the decency to not throw in the finer details, like the tattoo going down her spine, preserving some discretion from people less intimately acquainted with Lexa. “They’re pretty memorable, Lex. Even if is only half of a part of a side boob.”

“Can we please stop talking about how all of you somehow recognize my boobs?”

“Raven’s walked in on us having sex, of course she recognizes your boob,” Ignoring Lexa sinking inches further into her seat, Clarke goes on with the story. “Anyways, I went back up there last week to go get the painting back. And those assholes in the office told me it’s officially university property now.”

“What? That’s bull shit, it was a student exhibit. They can’t do that.”

“Yes they can,” All eyes fall back to Lexa, picking herself up off the floor from the shame of realizing how familiar her chest is to her friends. “It’s in the contract you signed.”

“How was I supposed to know that?”

“Gee, Clarke, if only you were dating someone who knows a thing or two about legally binding contracts. Like, I don’t know, a future lawyer?”

“Not helping, Raven.”

Apparently Lexa did get her hands on a copy of the contract, pointing out the glaringly obvious clause surrendering all of Clarke and the other artists’ ownership over their pieces, leaving them in the hands of the university. Lexa’s immortalized side boob lay in the hands of the dean now, free to do with it whatever she wishes. It might be hanging in her living room for all any of them know, a conversation piece for fancy academic dinners, free for all the tenured professors to creepily gaze at over expensive wine their tuition helps pay for.

“Clarke decided that if she wanted to go all Robin Hood and steal the paintings back for a couple of people. She needed a genius, and I just happened to be available.”

Octavia shakes her head, nowhere near surprised to hear how the two of them got dragged into all of this. If it hadn’t been for practice, Raven knows she would have been right there with them, going full tactical espionage on the mission, probably taking down the security guard to secure their escape, art pieces and all. Maybe it’s best she wasn’t there for it; Raven might have swooned right down the flights of stairs if she witnessed Octavia taking down a guy twice her size.

Raven explains their flawless infiltration of the building, thanks to Clarke knowing the art building like the back of her hand and Raven’s lock picking kit getting them through a couple of the interior doors. Octavia hangs onto every word, her half-eaten doughnut going ignored as Raven exaggerates a couple of details. Sure, they might not have actually vaulted over the half-walls of the patios in the back of the ceramics rooms to avoid a security officer patrolling the halls, but it made for good story telling, even with Lexa rolling her eyes at every far-fetched truth.

“So Clarke over here drops a lit flashlight down five flights of stairs, which probably tipped someone off that we were up there.”

“You’re the one who was hiding on the landing of the floor above me and scared the shit out of me.”

Distracted by her laptop, Lexa lets out a huff of a laugh. Clarke probably left that part of the story out the night before, trying to save face.

“Now that we know Clarke’s startled by loud noises, we can move on. We get up there, Clarke gets distracted and probably mildly turned on by Lexa’s side boob,” Clarke flips Raven off while taking another sip of her coffee. “And security sneaks up on us. They cuff us, throw us in the car, give us a stern talking to, and then you two came along.”

“How very anticlimactic,” Raven scoffs at Octavia’s dismissal of their mission. It was badass and she knows it, just jealous that she didn’t get a cut of the action. “Our little altercation with the cops after was more exciting than that.”

“Oh God, what did you two do?” Lexa covers her face with her hands, leaving Raven and Octavia more than offended. Four years of friendship and she still assumes the worst out of them. They’re practically saints, at least when they’re not setting a couple hundred dollars’ worth of candles ablaze and stealing artwork from the university they’ve yet to graduate from.

“We didn’t do anything. Those bozos at the office kept calling me Raven’s wife.”

Coffee flies across the table, specks of spit landing on top of Octavia’s backpack in her lap, soaking the notes Lexa left lying next to her laptop. Clarke wipes the dribbles of her drink from her mouth, eyes watering as she struggles to for a coherent sentence between fits of laughter.

“You two? Married? To each other?”

“Apparently that’s what my contact papers from work say.” Raven shrugs, handing Octavia a pile of napkins to try to salvage the fabric of her bag.

“You’re sure the three of you never took a little trip down to Vegas?” Lexa looks up from her screen long enough to see Raven shake her head. She goes back to typing, likely glad just to not hear that it’s a result of yet another one of Clarke, Raven, and Octavia’s adventures. “Do I need to run a record search for you guys?”

Shaking her head, Raven declines. She knows Lexa will actually do it, a whole range of databases at her full disposal thanks to her cushy internship at a family law office downtown.

“If we ever did go to Vegas and do something that stupid, I’m sure Clarke would have a thousand pictures of it,” Octavia glares at her friend, throwing the napkins on the table between them. There’s a noticeable stain near the straps of her backpack. “She’d probably be the one that convinced us to do it.”

“The only thing I would convince you to do is go to the same chapel as Britney Spears did.”

“That’s a great omen. Really trying to earn that maid-of-honor position, aren’t you?”

“Uh, guys-“ Lexa looks up from her laptop, but Octavia and Clarke are too far gone into arguing about the hypothetical Vegas wedding to notice. Normally Raven would intervene, but after a full morning of being judged by Lexa from across the table, she’s earned a little bit of silence from the lawyer.

“Would you rather get married by a fat drunk Elvis impersonator in a spandex suit instead?”

“You know, that actually seems kind of appealing,” Clarke and Octavia shoot Raven dumbfounded looks. “What? It’d make for some great photos to show the kids one day.”

It’d be quite a sight, calling their kids in from the porch of the house, little waist high pyromaniacs with hair twisted into braids scampering across the lawn. Abandoned projects would litter the yard, full blown multi-level box forts held together with duct tape and remains of multicolored foam volcanos popping up in splotches in the grass. Octavia would round them up in the living room while Raven digs through boxes for the old photo albums, flipping past the less than appropriate photos of Clarke’s 21st birthday with the body shots and the strip poker games, settling on that fateful weekend in Vegas. Just the two of them, a tipsy Clarke trying to stand up straight, a way too sober Lexa holding her up, but still giving her friends her blessing. And Elvis in between them all, buttons threatening to pop off his suit, a crooked pompadour wig covering up a mostly bald head, sideburns crawling down to his cheeks.

Maybe they’d have a video of it somewhere, one of them having the drunken sense to drop a couple extra dollars to have the moment immortalized on a DVD tucked in the midst of their collection of Disney movies. They’ll fast forward through the parts where Clarke starts crying or where Octavia blanks on Raven’s name for a good thirty seconds before calling her Robin for the rest of the vows. Somewhere in the house, there’ll be pictures of the real wedding, the one where Bellamy and Sinclair walked them down the aisle, where Clarke’s not wearing a trucker hat in tribute to the Spears wedding, and they actually got through the ring exchange without thinking they were about to puke.

Lexa clears her throat, not loud enough for Clarke and Octavia to notice over their bickering, but just enough for Raven to jump out of her little fantasy of that four bedroom house and the minivan with a bag full of soccer balls in the back and helping Octavia make cookies for the team bake sale that weekend. She quirks her brow at Raven, like she knows the girl’s a second away from doodling “Mrs. Raven Blake” and a thousand hearts and fireworks on her napkin. Raven rolls her eyes, catching Lexa’s small shake of her head before looking back at her screen.

“I think there’s something more important than pictures we need to-“ Lexa tries to speak again, only to be interrupted by Clarke.

“Come on, the Britney throwback is a good omen. All you have to do is make it at least 55 hours and you guys are golden!”

Cutting Lexa’s comment off doesn’t help, Raven watching Lexa grow more frustrated with every word coming out of each of their mouths. She keeps typing and looking back at the screen, even turning it so Clarke can see it better. But she’s still too caught up in the validity of Britney’s marriage to pay her any attention, even when Lexa starts patting her in the arm.

“So 55 hours is the benchmark for a successful marriage? Shit, Clarke, if those are your goals, no wonder Lexa hasn’t popped the question yet.”

Even behind her laptop, Raven catches the flush of the tips of Lexa’s ears, almost identical to the burning spreading across Clarke’s cheeks, one she tries to cover up with another swig of piping hot coffee.

“Too far, Blake. And who says Lexa’s going to be proposing? How do you know I won’t do it?”

“Please, we all know Commander Heart Eyes over here is going to drop to her knees and swear her fealty and her eternal life and soul to you.”

“Okay, that’s it!” Lexa yells, nearly the entire coffee shop turning to look at their table. Octavia nearly jumps out of her seat, and Raven’s strongly regretting the endless mocking about the bunny pajamas as her friend seethes across from them. “First of all, do not bring mine and Clarke’s relationship into this. Second, you two have a legitimate problem to deal with.”

They’re staring at Lexa’s computer screen, a photocopied scan of a form loaded in front of them. Raven’s eyes dart across the screen, bouncing from line to line. License numbers, officiant names, Social Security numbers, addresses, signatures, all filled in nice and clean. An official looking stamp sits on the bottom of the page, right next to a pair of signatures.

Raven’s signature. And Octavia’s signature. And a date nearly four years earlier.

“Lexa, what the hell is this?”

Raven scrolls to the top of the page, reading the words as Lexa moves to speak.

“Your marriage license.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A late night/early morning update since I will be out during my usual posting time.  
> Come talk about this with me or drop some feedback.
> 
> commandermari.tumblr.com

_4 Years Earlier_

“Hey, Raven?”

Octavia’s head falls over the edge of the bed, dangling next to Raven’s. Strands of hair splay over the pages of the book in her hands, cutting off a vaguely important sentence about the zeroth law of thermodynamics. She doesn’t need a textbook to explain that to her though, but it doesn’t make the braid tapping against the side of her head any more welcome.

“Rae, I need your help.”

Raven sweeps the hair blocking her page away, rereading the same paragraph she’s been trying to get past for the last ten minutes. She might be done with this chapter if Octavia would quit shoving her phone in her face, showing her another video of puppies playing in a kiddie pool. Hell, she’d probably already be done with college if it wasn’t for Octavia always showing up at her house unannounced, making herself at home in Raven’s bed with her stash of snacks in the kitchen cupboard that not even Sinclair knows about.

“It’ll be quick,” A finger jabs into the side of her cheek, over and over again. Fed up, Raven swats it away, slamming her book shut. Octavia just grins, still hanging upside down looking at Raven. “Will you make sure I filled this out right?”

“Do I look like a secretary?”

“No, but seeing as you’re a genius, I figured I’d ask,” Octavia’s face disappears, rummaging on the bed behind Raven for a few seconds before plopping down next to her, laptop perched between them on their legs. Always with the genius comments, trying to butter her up; Raven might have more room to complain if it didn’t always work on her though. “Plus you do this crap every year, you should be an expert on it.”

Raven looks at the screen in front of them, fighting the urge to slam the laptop shut and chuck it out the window. The dreaded financial aid form stares back at them. Flashbacks of her first time filling it out her senior year of high school flood Raven’s mind; the dollar store calculator she cracked in half, Sinclair’s boxes of important paperwork taking up every inch of the kitchen table, endless pots of coffee keeping them up for an entire night right before the submission deadline.

“No way, Blake. Go ask your brother on this one.”

“Come on, Raven! You know Bell’s not good with this kind of stuff,” Raven doesn’t even try to hide the scoff that slips out of her mouth. It’s a wonder Bellamy even gets his shoes on the right feet in the morning, let alone leaving him to fill out paper work that puts his sister’s entire college education on the line. Octavia pushes her in the shoulder. “Quit being an ass!”

“You’re the one that called your brother an idiot first.”

“I didn’t call him an idiot. Now please, just look at it for me? It’s not even the real thing, it’s just a practice one Pike is making us do for a grade.”

“Don’t you have counselors that are supposed to help you with this kind of crap?” Raven takes the laptop from her, scanning the information typed in the boxes. She’s no expert, not even at her own paperwork, let alone Octavia’s and the whole mess of complications tagging along with it.

“You mean the same counselors that put me in a freshman math class earlier this year and took almost two months to move me into the right one?”

“Fair point.”

Raven double checks a few more lines. With everything as right as it’s going to get, she clicks the submit button, handing the laptop back to Octavia for the results. A few seconds pass, Octavia’s eyes darting across the screen, brow furrowing further each time she scrolls down. She lets out a heavy sigh, closing the laptop and letting her head thump against the side of the bed.

“How much do you think one of my kidneys is worth?”

“About 200 thousand,” Octavia turns towards Raven, not expecting to get an actual answer. “Don’t ask me how I know that.”

“Never had you pegged as an organ harvester,” Octavia flips the laptop open again, rereading the page like she’s hoping for some kind of mistake. “You’d think the whole dead parents and getting raised by an older brother thing would net me some sympathy grants or something.”

If anyone knows that feeling, it’s Raven. There’s not much for foster kids either, spending years in the system bouncing from home to home, all thanks to a junkie mom and a no-name dad. She’s lucky she wound up with Sinclair two years before aging out of the system, even luckier that he took the foster dad thing a step further and filled out the adoption paperwork. It might have shot her chances at getting any financial aid in the foot, but having a roof over her head and someone that cares about her enough to help out as much as Sinclair does makes up for it.

“Shit. No offense or anything.”

The words roll right off Raven’s back. She knows Octavia’s deal with Bellamy isn’t much better than hers, that it just might be as bad as the years she spent with the couple that collected kids like trading cards. Octavia might not have six other screaming siblings running around, but she’s got Bellamy always trying to hide how hard he’s busting his ass working night shifts as a security guard to take care of her, the two of them still barely scraping by. It’s guilt she carries on her shoulders all the time, guilt Raven can see every time she drops Octavia off at the apartment, not finding her brother there when she opens the door for the third night that week.

“Didn’t you work your ass off for a soccer scholarship for this kind of thing?”

Octavia only lived in a persistently giddy state for a solid month after getting the news, a full ride to Polis University as part of the women’s soccer team. Raven and Clarke even skipped their own classes to head back to their old high school, just to watch the big assembly for Octavia and the rest of her teammates signing their letters of intent to the colleges offering them spots. “Isn’t any of that just extra for important stuff? Books, gear, contributing to me and Clarke’s alcohol fund?”

“Yeah, turns out full ride doesn’t exactly mean full ride. It covers my tuition, but only for 12 hours a semester. Which is fine, except I’m doing 15,” Octavia bites her lip, eyes darting back and forth across the screen. “Oh, and since I’m local, they aren’t offering to cover my housing. Apparently the athletic director doesn’t give two shits about making sure the soccer players have a place to live if it means the football team get a fully renovated gym. That means four more years of Bell’s apartment and sleeping on a pull-out couch.”

Raven’s seen the couch. She’s sat on the couch. She’s passed out drunk on the couch. It’s a terrible couch, one that might make sleeping on the floor a better alternative for Octavia.

“So what’s the next plan? Call Clarke, get her to steal a scalpel, fill up the tub with ice? Which kidney are you less attached to, your left or your right? Ever think about selling your eggs?”

“Hold on. I think I just figured out how to keep my organs,” Octavia keeps typing, pausing every few seconds to reread one of the prompts. She leans closer to the screen, leaving Raven wondering what kind of loophole she found in the system. “You’re in school full time, right?”

“Yeah, why?”

“How much did you make last year?”

“I don’t know, maybe 5 grand?” Student life intern isn’t exactly a profitable career, barely making minimum wage for her work answering phones, making reservations for meeting rooms for every organization on campus, leading flocks of incoming freshmen through orientation without letting any of them get lost. It’s torture, but when the university waives part of her tuition and still cuts her a check every two weeks, it’s almost worth it. “Again, why?”

“How much do you have in your checking and savings accounts?”

“Okay, what the hell are you doing?”

Raven reaches for the laptop, Octavia yanking it out of her hands, typing with one hand and batting Raven away with the other. Whatever she’s doing has to be illegal, more illegal than organ harvesting.

A few seconds pass before Raven gives up the fight, expecting federal agents to come swarming through her bedroom door at any second to book her for whatever fraud Octavia’s committing with her information. Her fear only grows as Octavia watches the screen load before cracking a grin. She turns the laptop towards Raven, her eyes widening at the considerably larger number popping up this time.

“Pretty nice looking number, right?”

Raven nods. It’s enough to cover what’s left of her tuition that being a university employee with a handful of scholarships doesn’t take care of, what Sinclair’s been paying out of pocket every semester for the last two years. It’s enough to actually get the current version of her textbooks, not ones two editions behind even though they’re only missing a single picture from a chapter they’ll never go over in class. It’s enough to leave a little extra in her bank account, enough to buy her friends a couple of rounds of drinks for midterms and finals.

“What’s the catch?”

“We have to get married.”

The kidney and egg selling might be less complicated than that.

“One big problem here, Octavia,” Raven shuts the laptop before Octavia finds another exploit to increase their potential earnings, one involving them adopting a kid or eight. “You’re seventeen, it’s not even legal for you to get married without a guardian’s permission. You really think your brother is going to let that happen? Especially to me?”

Octavia shrugs. Raven and Bellamy might be decent enough friends, coming from the same little group during high school. And maybe they’re past that whole drunken hook-up at the Griffin’s beach house the summer after she graduated, but she’s sure that hearing that she’s planning on marrying his sister to scam the government might not go over all that well.

There’s at least another thirty reasons she can come up with to sway Octavia’s mind, but the silence from her friend makes her think she’s covered her point well enough with the Bellamy scare tactic. She gives her credit for trying though, especially with a decent number like that staring both of them in the face. It’s almost tempting enough to make her want to be the future Mrs. Blake.

Thinking the conversation’s over, that Octavia’s slowly coming to her senses, Raven opens her book again. Seconds later, Octavia slams it shut, hovering inches away from her face.

“My birthday’s in two weeks. Applications aren’t due until June.”

She backs off a few inches, giving Raven actual room to breathe. Octavia settles down on one knee, taking Raven’s left hand in both of hers.

“Raven Reyes,” She can’t stifle the groan that slips out when Octavia’s voice cracks and her lip trembles. There’s a glint of a tear hanging at the corners of her eyes, and Raven might believe it’s genuine if she hadn’t been the one to teach her how to cry on cue. “Will you marry me so we can roll around in piles of money together for the rest of our college lives?”

“Real funny, O. Come on, get up so we can go get that kidney out.”

Raven moves to pull her hand away, but Octavia latches on tight. It’s not just about the money and the dorm and the potential spring breaks with the whole gang on South Padre Island. It’s keeping Octavia in school, keeping her on the soccer team she’s already pouring her whole life into, and keeping her from being stuck sharing a shoebox apartment with her brother for the next four years.

It’s also a chance that she can stop hitting Sinclair up every semester for a check covering the rest of her classes, one she knows she’ll never be able to repay him, even if he insists he would do it for her anyways, daughter or not. As crazy as it sounds, it might just be the ticket to start saving up for grad school in a few years; a master’s degree in engineering isn’t cheap, but if the numbers Octavia’s showing her are right, it just might be able to happen.

“I’m being serious, Rae,” Octavia grips Raven’s hand tighter as she speaks. “We can go to the courthouse, do the paperwork, get in front of a judge, and call it done. All we have to do is sit back and wait for our money to roll in. Nothing changes.”

“Except that we’re legally married to each other.”

“Wow, you make it sound like being my wife is a bad thing.” Letting go of Raven’s hand, Octavia settles back on her legs.

“I’m just saying, shouldn’t your fake spouse be someone you can actually tolerate? Especially if you’re going to be with them for at least four years?”

“That’s why I’m asking you. You’re my best friend, and you know how shitty this whole paying for school thing is more than anyone,” She’s got a point. Clarke’s got scholarships and family money to keep her covered. Monty’s got a nice grant taking care of his classes at community. Jasper’s taking a year or two off to work and save up money before taking any classes. But she and Octavia aren’t that lucky, not without each other at least. “I love you, Raven. Doesn’t that count for a little more than just tolerating you?”

“This is a terrible idea. Worse than when you bought that dirt bike off of Craigslist.”

At least that only ended with two straight months of weekends holed up in a storage shed inhaling gas fumes trying to get it running. The six inches of scraped up skin stretching across Octavia’s thigh after she crashed it thirty minutes into her first ride were easier to deal with than the fallout of this will ever be.

“No, it’s genius. If anyone should recognize that, it’s you.”

“Quit trying to appeal to my ego.”

“I will if you say yes.”

Another groan escapes as Raven covers her face with her hands. They know each other too well, and she knows Octavia won’t drop the idea until the day before the application deadline. She’s tempted to say yes just to shut her up. Octavia pulls her hands away, and she half expects to find her throwing the full puppy dog eyes her way.

Instead, she’s met with the pleading look in her best friend’s eyes, the same one she saw the day a judge tried to split the Blake siblings up, not wanting to turn custody of a 14 year old girl over to her 20 year old brother. She grabs for Raven’s hands again, gripping them tighter than before. She holds onto Raven like she’s clinging to her last hope, like she’s the only thing that can keep her from having to change her whole plan for school, the one she’s been working towards for years now.

It takes a few seconds and the sight of a not so forced tear sliding down her best friend’s cheek for her to cave.

“Jesus, okay, fine!” Octavia gawks at her, like she’s waiting for the punchline of one of Raven’s infamously inappropriately timed jokes. It never comes. Raven frees her hand from Octavia’s grip, settling them on her shoulders and forcing the younger girl to look at her. “For the money, okay?”

Octavia nods and Raven repeats her own words in her mind. For the money. For Octavia to get her dorm. For Sinclair to stop having to pay for her classes. For finally having a little extra to enjoy their lives instead of scrambling trying to make sure they can afford food for the week. For them being the only two people in the world outside of their families they can depend on.

“You’re the best wife ever, you know that?”

Octavia jumps on top of Raven, wrapping her arms around her neck and nearly choking the life out of her. They might not even make it to wives if she doesn’t get off of her soon.

“Yeah, yeah. Save it for the wedding vows.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And another flashback. I may or may not be promising one more after this one.  
> Throw some feedback my way.
> 
> commandermari.tumblr.com

_4 Years Earlier_

Raven’s fast asleep, curled under her blanket and savoring the first day of summer break. Her exams are done, her final papers submitted seconds shy of the midnight deadline last night, and Clarke’s promise of a week-long finals survival party lingers in the back of her mind. If luck will have it, she’ll spend her break at the Griffin’s poolside, sipping mimosas with Abby in the morning, much to Clarke’s annoyance, and kicking everyone’s ass at beer pong in the evenings. But for now, it’s time to get reacquainted with her one true love, the bed she’s neglected all week in favor of a corner desk on the fifth floor of the library. Just Raven, her sheets of pure fucking gold, the pillow tucked under her head-

“Wake up, Reyes! Time to get hitched!”

And her soon-to-be bride.

Octavia lands on top of Raven’s body, yanking the blanket from over her head. One of her knees digs into Raven’s back, the other ramming into her side right below her ribs. Raven manages to catch a glimpse at the clock next to her bed through Octavia’s arms, propped on either side of her head and she rips Raven’s pillow out from under her. She’s too exhausted to even complain about the numbers glowing across from her, just past 9 in the morning, mere hours after she managed to crawl into bed.

“I take it back, this is a stupid idea. Go propose to Clarke.”

“Too late, you already signed the papers.”

That had been a whole ordeal in itself, waking up at the crack of dawn on Octavia’s birthday and trudging down to the courthouse. Apparently half the city was there waiting to fill out marriage license applications, both of them missing a full day of classes for the occasion, only to find out they had to come back three days later for the actual courthouse ceremony.

“Come on, get your ass in gear. Our appointment’s at 11.”

“Means I still have a good hour of sleep.” Raven throws the pillow back over her head, enjoying the seconds of darkness surrounding her before it’s ripped away, turning into a weapon as Octavia wails on the back of her head.

“No offense, but you smell like week old coffee and my gym bag,” Raven tilts her head, trying to catch a whiff of her own scent. It might have been a few days since she showered, but to be compared to Octavia’s soccer bag is just downright insulting. She knows for a fact it hasn’t been washed all season, one of Octavia’s superstitions that she refuses to break when her team’s on an undefeated streak heading into district championships. “Go shower, I’ll pick out something for you to wear for our special day.”

Octavia climbs off of Raven, tucking into her closet before she can even object. She drags herself out of bed, narrowly missing a hanger flying out of the closet on her way to the bathroom. Octavia’s got a pile of potential outfits growing in the middle of the room.

“No dresses!” Raven calls before shutting the door behind her, eyeing what’s definitely her homecoming dress from freshman year on top of the pile.

“No promises!”

 

There’s a stack of clothes sitting on her bed when Raven finishes washing the stench of library and stress and exams out of her hair. She catches streaks of grease washing down the drain, even though she can’t remember the last time she was actually working on one of her projects in the garage. Luckily, Octavia complied with her one request, a pair of dark jeans and a simple white button up lying folded on top of her sheets, her usual pair of boots tucked under the edge of her bed.

She changes without interruption, a surprise considering how often Octavia’s violations of the sanctity of her room have been occurring. At least once a week she winds up crawling through the window after practice, tracking mud into the room and making herself comfortable. Twice Raven came back from closing up the student life center, finding Octavia asleep on her bed, dirty soccer kit mixed with Raven’s own clothes in her laundry basket. She keeps it up, she’s going to be the one doing her laundry, before Sinclair starts getting suspicious.

It’s all secret meetings, ones spent trying to make changes to their paperwork to get them into the dorms together, getting the last of their financial aid forms filled out and ready to send out the second their marriage license gets filed. Clarke manages to sneak her way in every once in a while, the most recent being the day of Octavia’s birthday, their best friend noticing their suspicious absence on their annual ditch day. They covered it up with excuses about exams and actually needing to be in class, both fearing the guaranteed wrath that would come if she ever found out about their plan.

Voices traveling down the hallway grab Raven’s attention, her fingers slipping on the clasp of her brace as she secures it over her jeans.

Sinclair’s downstairs.

Laughing.

With Octavia.

She nearly trips as she bolts down the stairs, skipping the last two and clinging to the bannister for dear life as she stumbles into the kitchen.

“You two look nice.” Sinclair comments, sipping from his coffee at the kitchen table with a raised brow. Considering the words “formal wear” and “Raven Reyes” are never used in the same sentence, it’s no wonder he’s shocked to find her not only wearing actual clothes before noon, but something other than one of her bad pun sporting t-shirts or a tank top that’s seen the inside of the hood of her car more than the inside of the washing machine.

She’s got a smart rebuttal on the tip of her tongue when Octavia comes out from behind the fridge, a piece of toast hanging between her teeth as she kicks the door closed, her hands busy with a plate of pancakes and a glass of orange juice. She must have taken the whole marriage thing a step further, sporting a white halter dress. The crocheted hem falls just above her knees, thin straps of her gladiator sandals twining midway up her calves. Raven looks down at her own outfit again, suddenly feeling underdressed, like she should throw on a tie or some suspenders or something to spruce it up.

“Hey, Earth to Raven,” Octavia waves her toast in front of Raven’s face. Behind her, Sinclair shakes his head, probably laughing into his coffee at the dumbstruck look on his daughter’s face. If the outfits didn’t give it away that they were up to something, Raven’s gawking at Octavia sure did. “You want pancakes before we go?”

“Uh, sure.”

Raven reaches for the plate still in Octavia’s hand, an ideal looking white chocolate chip pancake sitting on top of the stack. Her fingers hover above it for a second before Octavia pulls it away.

“Too bad, these are the last ones,” She drops into the chair next to Sinclair, making a whole show of covering them with syrup and taking a bite out of the stack. Those pancakes might have been the saving grace of this entire morning, now all she could do is watch Octavia shovel them in her face. “Shouldn’t have been so gross this morning when I woke you up.”

“Which begs me to ask, what are you guys doing that requires Raven to be awake this early and wearing a pair of jeans not covered in holes and grease?”

“A wedding,” Octavia mumbles through a mouthful of food, but Raven’s the one that winds up choking, a handful of chocolate chips picked from the bowl on the counter winding up lodged in her throat. Those three seconds of her coughing might be the longest of her life, even longer than the stare down between her and the county clerk when Octavia practically bounced up to the counter and said they were there for a marriage license. “One of my old friends from club soccer. Raven’s my plus one.”

“You agreed to go to a wedding?”

Sinclair might look less shocked if Raven admitted it was her own wedding. She probably should do that though, right? There’s probably some unwritten code in the rules of not being a terrible daughter, one that specifies telling your only family member that you’re getting married to your best friend for the sake of both of you not having to run them into debt to pay for school. It’s not like it’s an easy thing to explain though, that for the next four years she’ll be living a lie all for the sake of money. It probably goes against all the morals Sinclair raised her with, or at least tried to as best as he could over the last four years.

“Is it so hard to believe I might want to witness two people sharing their lives together?”

“Yes.” Octavia and Sinclair deadpan at the same time, the two exchanging small nods of thanks for siding with each other.

Raven throws her hands in the air, walking out of the kitchen to where her keys are hanging on the front door. She leans back into the kitchen, her dad and best friend laughing to themselves, most likely about her and her disdain for all things open and affectionate.

“Blake, if you don’t hurry up, I’m leaving without you.”

Octavia jumps out of her seat, grabbing her last piece of toast and running towards the front door, waving back towards Sinclair and spitting out what might have been a thanks for breakfast, along with a couple of bread crumbs. Raven gives her own little wave, one backed with guilt over not being able to tell him the truth, one that makes his “be careful” weigh a little heavier on her shoulders.

 

Raven’s not sure why she’s surprised that they forgot something. A huge, glaringly obvious something that’s stopping them from going through with the wedding and getting the damn license and getting their damn financial aid.

Witnesses. Two of them to be exact.

“We can call Clarke. She’s probably just babysitting Aden right now.”

Raven paces outside of the courthouse, practically sweating through her shirt. Clarke’s the third to last person they’re going to call, barely beating out Bellamy and Sinclair for the top spots. No Clarke, especially not when she’s toting her little brother around, the adorable little shit unable to keep his mouth shut. It’d only be a matter of time until he’s blabbering to Abby about the wedding, leading to Abby calling Sinclair, and Sinclair handing Ravel a shovel so she can dig her own grave.

“Absolutely no calling Clarke. Besides, a 12 year old doesn’t count as a legal witness, we’d need another person anyways.”

“Jasper and Monty?”

“Like those two can keep their mouths shut,” They probably wouldn’t even make it halfway through the ceremony before one of them makes a stupid joke about the wedding in their group chat, or takes a picture and posts it for everyone to see. More likely, they’d all be getting drunk at Clarke’s later that night and spill the beans. "We can’t call anyone we know, they’ll sell us out.”

“Remind me why nobody can know? Not even Clarke?”

“Because, Octavia,” Raven lowers her voice, pulling Octavia closer to her, making sure none of the passersby overhear their conversation. “We’re pretty much committing fraud here. The less people who know, the easier this will be for us to clean everything up in the end.”

“Calm down, we’re getting married, not murdering someone,” Octavia shoves her away, opting to scroll through her phone for a set of possible witnesses. “And it’s not fraud. Real couples get divorced all the time, we’re just joining the party in a few years after we rip off the government.”

“Would you not mention that part so loud in front of a government building?”

Raven goes back to pacing. Maybe someone from one of her old foster families can come down and vouch for her. She might have Finn and his mom’s number somewhere. Except Finn’s in jail for that little joyride they went on that he took the blame for. The same one that led to her getting removed from that family and right back into a group home until Sinclair took her in. Right. Might not be the best phone call to make.

All they need is someone with no ties to their family or friends. People who won’t give two shits if they were to find out the marriage was a sham. People like anyone walking around downtown looking to make a couple of bucks for a few minutes of their time.

“Octavia, give me all the cash in your wallet.”

 

“The future, its successes and failures, its joys and sorrows, its pleasures and pains, are hidden from your eyes, mingled in your every life, and expected to one day be known,” The officiant stands between them in the courtroom, reading from a folder perched just behind their joined hands. Raven’s palms are sweating, or maybe Octavia’s are, their hands clammy as they try not to shake. “And so, not knowing what is before you, you take each other for better or for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health.”

Raven smirks at the richer part, she and Octavia spending the better part of their time waiting for the couple ahead of them to step out of the room talking about their plans with their first checks. Octavia claims she’s throwing a down payment on a motorcycle the second she pays off the last of her balance with the university, while Raven’s already got her eye on a drafting workbench for Sinclair’s birthday and a new 300 piece mechanic’s set for herself, one of the fancy ones with a case. Plus they’ve still got a dorm room to decorate, their application magically winding up at the top of the housing director’s pile, thanks to Raven’s little visit down to his office before heading out for spring break.

“And so you begin your married life by the voluntary and complete surrender of your individual lives in the interest of that deeper and wider life which you two have in common. You will belong entirely to each other; you will be one in mind, one in heart and one in affection. May this love with which you join your hands and hearts today never fail, but grow deeper and stronger as the years go on.”

It’s a little deep for some courthouse wedding vows, making it sound like they’re literally selling their souls away in exchange for the money. But Octavia’s grinning across from Raven, probably picturing herself riding across the highway on her bike one day, and it’s enough to ease her mind.

“Do you, Raven, take Octavia, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

Lawfully, Raven reminds herself. On paper, not in spirit like the old man in front of them is droning on and on about. They covered that part of the deal seconds after Raven said yes. No acting like a married couple, no holding each other to any commitment. Not even in front of the two suits walking down the street they just paid $25 each to act as their witnesses, not even bothering with little things like introductions.

“I do.”

“And do you, Octavia, take Raven, to be your lawfully wedded wife?”

“Damn right, I do.”

The comment catches the officiant off guard, leaving him stumbling through the exchanging of the rings. Rings Raven didn’t even know existed until Octavia pulled them out of a pocket on her dress.

“Don’t worry,” Octavia whispers as she slides the ring on: thin, silver plated, shaped like a small arrow wrapping around Raven’s finger. The one in her palm meant for Octavia matches it, fitting snug on her best friend’s hand. “Got ‘em at Target. I had a gift card.”

“Classy, O.”

Their banter draws a chuckle out of the officiant, probably seeing countless exchanges like that going on every time he pulls ones of these ceremonies out.

“As Raven and Octavia have consented to live together in matrimony, and having declared their intentions before these witnesses,” They both fight back a laugh at that line, Raven giving a wink towards their witnesses, looking all too anxious to head back to whatever office they wandered out of and tell the rest of their coworkers their story. “I do hereby join them in matrimony, and declare they are now wife and wife.”

A smattering of applause comes from their witnesses in the middle of the room, a few claps travelling through the door from the couple that had been waiting behind them in line, realizing their ceremony was minutes from starting. The officiant does a little cough, looking between the two of them, head tilting to the side.

“Oh shit,” Raven whispers, Octavia looking entirely lost. “We’re supposed to kiss.”

“What? Ew, that’s fucking gross.”

“Oh fuck you, I showered.”

“Did you brush and floss?”

“Octavia!”

The silence in the room pushes past polite and into awkward, all three sets of eyes on the two of them. Unless they do something quick, the officiant might just realize it’s a sham and shred their marriage license in front of them. Do it or die, bite the bullet, Raven leans in, eyes scrunched shut to avoid Octavia inevitably gagging at the impending kiss.

It's quick, Raven barely able to count to three before it ends, Octavia pulling away from her and forcing her to open her eyes. The aftermath lasts longer than that, Raven’s lips still burning where Octavia’s slipped between hers, the taste of beeswax chapstick and Sinclair’s pancakes hanging on the tip of her tongue as she runs it along her bottom lip.

“Should’ve just high fived,” Octavia whispers, waiting for the all clear from the officiant before they make another move. She all but drags Raven down the aisle, past their witnesses looking almost as confused as her. “Good thing we didn’t call Clarke. She’d never let us live that down.”

Raven might never let herself live the moment down, those seconds of kissing Octavia permanently etched in her brain, overshadowing the whole part where she just married the girl seconds before. The longest three seconds of her life. Maybe even the best three seconds of her life.

But they can’t talk about those three seconds, it’s part of the terms. As far as they’re both concerned, those three seconds meant nothing more than a handshake, a formality to seal the deal on a business deal. A formality Raven might not mind going through again and again.

They hold hands out of the courthouse, partly for show, partly because Raven might be incapable of moving a single inch, all functions of her brain ceasing as she replays the kiss with her best friend and now wife. They keep their fingers laced together all the way until they reach the end of the block the courthouse sits on. Waiting for the crosswalk light to change, Raven moves to take the ring off her finger, before she forgets and they wind up at Clarke’s facing a full interrogation on the matching jewelry. Knowing their friends, they’ll notice the little detail, no matter how much alcohol they have flowing through their systems.

Octavia’s hand lands on hers, stilling Raven’s finger. She pushes the ring back down, sliding past Raven’s knuckle and settling back in the little indent already forming on her skin.

“Keep it on. At least for the ride home, wifey.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear, I'm done with the flashbacks.  
> Also, earlier update than usual today.
> 
> commandermari.tumblr.com

_4 Years Earlier_

Raven’s locked in a dead heat game of chicken with Monty, one that’s been waging since the sun started setting, lights flickering on around them in the small waves of the pool. She’s almost got him off-balance, slipping on Harper’s shoulders as she staggers, one of Clarke’s patented underwater ankle kicks leaving her reeling and yelling accusations of cheating, words falling on the drunk ears of their friends around them.

“We passed, bitches!”

Octavia’s cannonball, fueled by half a liter of rum and coke, breaks up the match, Raven slipping off Clarke’s shoulders into the water, Monty and Harper toppling backwards onto an empty lounger floating by. As Raven breaks for air, Octavia’s right there just inches away, grinning like a maniac before spitting a mouthful of water in her face.

8 hours into married life and she’s already considering divorcing the girl. Or making herself a widow.

At least they’ve kept their cover, a near miraculous feat with how hard Octavia’s been hitting the cooler sitting on the Griffins’ porch. It’s not without a couple of close calls though. Raven had to stop Octavia from posting a picture of them in the car on the way home from the courthouse, _“ **@reyesgoesboom** Take my ass to Disneyland or we’re getting a divorce.” _already typed up and ready for every one of their friends to see. Clarke nearly blew past their cover, prying for details about the “wedding” they went to, Sinclair mentioning it when Clarke showed up at the house looking to drag Raven out for a pre-party supply run. Even Bellamy got curious, asking why it looked like Octavia’s closet exploded in the apartment, her entire collection of dresses and shoes scattered on the floor.

“Don’t you still have two weeks of school left, drunky?” Raven and the others might be free, but Octavia’s still got appearances to keep up and finals to take before that diploma’s rightfully hers. Nobody’s about to let that stop her from celebrating though, especially not Octavia herself.

“Let me be happy for my friends,” Raven’s not about to argue, deserving a couple of drinks herself for finishing on the Dean’s List again, acing everything and continuing her streak of not strangling the asshole assistant in the engineering lab that kept trying to throw her out after hours the entire week of finals. “Especially you, my beautiful, perfect, amazing-“

“The next words out of your mouth better be ‘platonic best friend that I am absolutely not legally tied to and who I owe the rest of my mortal and potential immortal life to’ or I will smack you with a pool noodle.”

“Sounds kinky.”

Raven dunks Octavia under the water, a half-desperate effort in hopes of sobering her up and keeping her quiet. Jasper’s too close, able to overhear snippets of their conversation even over the splashes of Monroe and Miller playing keep away with his goggles. Bellamy’s feet away setting up a beer pong table with Murphy in the grass, Clarke walking back and forth with solo cups and ping pong balls and cases of beer. Even with almost everyone nearing the point of being shit-faced, aside from Wells and Harper, Raven knows any one of them would notice them making any reference to their little plan this afternoon, even if Octavia mumbled them underwater.

Octavia splashes back at Raven, sparking a war that only ends when Jake, savior of all nights for drunkenly celebrating finals, drops a few boxes of pizza and wings on the porch. After having breakfast stolen right from under her nose and spending the rest of her non-legally binding afternoon helping Clarke out at the house, Raven pushes her ego to the side, letting Octavia get one good whack with a pool noodle on her shoulder as she retreats from the water.

“Hey!” Octavia calls back, clinging to the edge of the pool ad Raven climbs onto the deck. Raven nods, waiting for her response. “Bring me food?”

For better or worse, Raven reminds herself, picking up a second plate and loading it with enough food to try to sober Octavia up. Octavia doesn’t both getting out of the pool, content with waiting for Raven to make the walk back to the pool and sit down on the ledge next to her. Still drunk and clutching a hot wing in her hand, Octavia leans her head against Raven’s thigh, nearly sending Raven falling straight into the pool, pizza and all.

 

“Get your ass out of the way, Murphy, I’m taking over.”

By nightfall, there’s a vicious beer pong tournament going on by the pool, one Raven and Clarke gracefully bowed out of after the first round. Throwing the game to Monty and Jasper had been Raven’s idea, wanting nothing more than to kick back on the deck and watch everyone else, already exhausted from a full day of running around.

“Go find another team to mooch off of, brat,” Murphy nudges Octavia away from the table, retaking his place next to Bellamy as Miller and Monroe set up the cups on their end of the table. “Dream Team isn’t splitting up for anyone.”

“Dream Team’s currently getting our asses handed to us,” Bellamy chimes in, reminding Murphy the only reason they’re sitting pretty on a second to last spot is thanks to Raven and Clarke’s self-sacrifice in an effort to claim the porch swing as their own for the night. “Sorry, Murphy. Dream Team’s out. Better Blakes are in.”

“Suck it, Murphy.” Octavia hisses as he slinks inside the house. Raven makes him a pity offering of a beer from the cooler beneath the swing, one he takes with a grunt of appreciation before slamming the door behind him.

Better Blakes turn the game around, sinking cup after cup thanks to Octavia. Miller makes up excuses after another ball completely overshoots the table, something about depth perception being off and losing a contact in the pool earlier, an excuse that earns him a smack in the head from Monroe and a threat to replace him as her teammate.

“Hand me a beer?” Clarke sprawls across the swing, dropping her feet in Raven’s lap. Raven complies, digging one out for herself before handing it off to Clarke, a series of groans erupting from the beer pong table as Bellamy lands a shot of his own. “Thanks. Cute ring, by the way. Where’d you get it?”

In her rush to go shopping with Clarke and dig through her parents’ liquor cabinet for the booze they’d miss the least at the hands of a bunch of college students, Raven forgot to take it off. Now it’s sitting there, in all its obvious glory, right on her left hand. Raven tries to play it cool, hoping that Clarke doesn’t notice any more little details, like the death grip she’s got on the neck of her bottle, seconds from shattering it in her hand.

“Target,” She hopes Octavia remembered to take hers off, before some freak reflection of moonlight bounces off of it and catches Clarke’s eye from across the yard. “I had a gift card.”

“I’m offended. Apparently you went all out for that wedding O dragged you to,” Clarke pauses as Murphy steps out of the house with Wells following, the two in an argument over the tail end of whatever soccer game they’d been watching inside. “I couldn’t even get you to take pictures with me after graduation because you didn’t want to be seen in a dress.”

“That dress was disgusting, Clarke,” Disgusting and entirely mandatory, according to Arkadia High’s faculty that year, the teachers assisting with graduation doing checks as people walked in for graduation; guys in slacks, solid button up shirts and a tie, girls in dresses or skirts, anyone not following their standards getting banned from walking. Raven tried convincing Clarke she could pull a quick change right before the band played and cued them to start walking, ditching the dress under the cover of her gown. “Completely could have gotten away with the tank top and shorts underneath and sat through the ceremony in comfort, but _someone_ wouldn’t let me.”

 _Someone_ only fought her on the idea, not wanting to spend the 3 hour ceremony bored out of her mind, needing Raven there to make smartass comments during the student council president’s speech and to keep her from falling asleep during the choir performance at the end of the ceremony.

“I see what’s going on here.”

Raven’s pretty sure her heart slams out of her chest and lands in the last cup on Miller and Monroe’s side of the table, not the ping pong ball flying out of Octavia’s hand. That’s it. They’re done for. Clarke’s going to bury them both right there in the back yard, their bodies turning into some natural fertilizer for Jake’s little crop of tomatoes near the shed in the corner. She hopes Sinclair finds her make-shift will in her desk, promising Harper free reign over her closet, Monty all of her electronics, except for her TV, Miller staking a claim on that, the deals scrawled out in marker on a Chipotle napkin.

Never will she see that first financial aid check. Never will she blow that check on expensive tools and junk food. Never will she climb on the back of Octavia’s motorcycle as they fly down the highway. Never will she kiss Octavia again, for real this time and not for show in the middle of a courthouse. No, this is where her life ends, sitting on the Griffins’ porch swing, beer in hand, after just 20 short years and on the day of her wedding.

“You like Octavia more than me.”

She’s never been one to rank her friends, to pit them against each other to fight for a place in her heart. Clarke’s got years of friendship on Octavia, her and Raven meeting when they were half-toothless kindergarteners swinging on the monkey bars during recess; Octavia didn’t come into their lives until the end of middle school, crossing the playground in a blaze of Bellamy’s stolen BMX bike glory, landing her a lunch detention next to Raven for shoving Atom off a slide. But not once has she ever thought one held more importance than the other.

That is, until Octavia dropped down on one knee in front of her, dragged her to a courthouse to swap some vows, slipped a ring on her finger, and spent a full drive back to her and Bellamy’s apartment arguing whether Reyes-Blake or Blake-Reyes sounded better. Because best friends can’t trump best friends, but a wife sure can, especially when said wife is the only reason she’s not running herself into college induced debt for the next four years.

Wife also trumps best friend when she’s still sitting there hours later, swearing she can still taste the pancakes and orange juice on Octavia’s lips, even with shot after shot that Clarke and Bellamy egged her to take to kick the party off right.

“Don’t be stupid, Clarke. You know I don’t-“

“Shhhhhh,” Clarke drunkenly clamps a hand over Raven’s mouth, taking a few tries to actually stick the landing and not wind up with a finger up her nose or in her eye. It cuts off her excuse about not playing favorites within their little group of musketeers. “I’m not mad. I understand.”

“Understand what?”

Raven looks back towards the game, Octavia jumping on Bellamy while Miller nearly flips the table in frustration. Monty and Jasper call next game against the fresh faced champions, a game sure to end even faster and with more embarrassment for the set of best friends. Octavia throws a thumbs up to Raven, slurring for her to come over and be her good luck charm for the next round. Not that she needs the luck, but Raven’s not about to tell her no. She’s dragging Clarke’s legs off of her lap when the blonde clears her throat, looking between both of her friends and rolling her eyes.

“Please,” She takes another sip from her beer, tilting the nearly empty bottle between Raven and Octavia. “You’re both super obvious about it.”

There’s no time to ask what she means, or even throw herself into another panic that Clarke knows about the wedding. Octavia’s at Raven’s side, dragging her across the yard and back towards the game, Clarke smirking at them all the way back.

They’re begging to get caught, and Raven’s not about to let that happen. While Octavia searches for her next victims at beer pong, Raven tries to come up with a new plan. One fool-proof enough to counter their already fool-proof marriage plan.

By the time Octavia’s back with Murphy, Raven’s only got one idea, one she’s not entirely thrilled about.

 

“Hey, you awake?”

Raven’s been awake for hours, cursing herself for wasting most of the afternoon and night drinking, knowing she can never fall asleep no matter how much she’s sobered up over the night. Throw in a certain friend lying next to her on the trampoline shaking her every couple of minutes, thinking she heard a raccoon rummaging through the trash or Murphy creeping towards them with the water balloons he’s been pelting at people for hours, and she’d be surprised if she was anything but wide awake.

“No, I’m dead asleep.”

“Oh, okay,” Octavia shifts on the trampoline next to Raven, bouncing their makeshift bed for the night. It’s too nice of a night, especially for the summer, for anyone to bother sleeping inside the house. Clarke’s curled up on the porch swing with Monty and Harper, Bellamy’s close to drowning on a pool lounger, even Murphy’s out there with them lying on a lawn chair. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

“No, I’m up,” Either she’s still drunk or she’s half-asleep herself. Years of tagging along with Raven made her a worthy partner in making sarcastic comments, so for one to go over her head that easy must mean she’s in a serious spot. Raven rolls over, finding Octavia lying on her back, head tilted towards her. “What’s up?”

“Just, uh…thanks, you know?”

“For what?”

For bringing her food when she was too lazy to get out of the water? For finally teaming up with her for a round of beer pong, absolutely destroying a reunited Murphy and Bellamy? For hauling her ass upstairs to Clarke’s spare bedroom and dragging the pillow and blankets they’re currently laying on back to the trampoline?

“Jesus, are you gonna make me say it out loud?”

“Considering I have no idea what you’re talking about, yeah.”

Octavia closes her eyes, taking in a deep breath before turning away from Raven. Too serious to still be drunk, she stares up at the stars for a few minutes. More than once she looks like she’s about to speak, only to fall back into an even longer silence. Raven waits, knowing she’ll stay up the rest of the night waiting if she has to.

“I know this whole thing we did today was pretty stupid,” Octavia shifts onto her side, lying face-to-face with Raven. Her fingers toy with the ring still around her finger, the pieces slowly starting to click in Raven’s mind. “But I’m glad I’m being stupid with you.”

“Are we still talking about that last game of chicken against Wells and Bell? Because that was just plain genius strategizing.”

Genius strategizing, just like she’s pulling now avoiding the whole marriage topic. Octavia can’t blame her, she’s just being cautious. Anyone could wake up right now and hear them talking about it, deciding to go running around the backyard announcing their marriage to everyone in the middle of the night. It’s not deflection, it’s self-preservation.

“Raven, knock it off. I mean the wedding.”

“Yeah, you’re welcome. Just don’t forget, you’re not the only one getting something out of this.” The way things look now, Raven’s got the short end of the stick, Octavia sitting free and clear of any doubts and complications about it all.

“I know, trust me. I’m just glad you agreed to everything.”

Raven sighs, realizing it’s time to bite the bullet she’s been chewing on for hours now.

“Look, I think we should settle one more thing,” Octavia waits for her to go on, biting her thumb wondering what else they could throw into this mix. “We shouldn’t actually talk about this after tonight.”

“What, like at all?”

“Unless it’s something to do with some paperwork we have to fill out, then yeah.”

It makes sense. The less they talk about it, the less there’s a chance they’ll slip up. Any absolutely necessary conversations they have can take place between the two of them, away from anyone else, in a place where they can resolve the issue like that and get back to pretending they’re not in this lie. And maybe then, they can just forget about it entirely, no joking and teasing each other to remind them of what they just did.

Octavia frowns, and Raven almost sucks the words back in, chalking it up to the alcohol from earlier that night keeping her from thinking straight.

“I guess that makes sense,” Octavia agrees after a few seconds. “Can I at least get some parting wife words in before we say ‘screw it’ and go back to normal?”

“Come on, we already did the sappy vow exchange earlier today.”

“Yeah, but those were our wedding vows,” Her hand wraps around Raven’s, pulling them up to their chests, rings touching rings. If she moves half an inch closer, she’ll feel Raven’s heart pounding straight out of her chest. “I’m giving you my best friend vows right now.”

Raven bites back a comment, knowing in some strange way, Octavia’s talking perfect sense right now. They’re best friends before they’re wives, no matter what some piece of paper currently stashed in Raven’s glove compartment says. And they’ll still be best friends in four years when all this is over, when they’re free to move on to other parts of their lives without a marriage still hanging over their heads. Raven’s not about to let either of them throw that away, and she’s not about to brush off any attempt to make that clear.

“I, Octavia Blake-Reyes-“

“Octavia _Reyes-Blake_ …”

“You fucking wish,” They laugh, the trampoline bouncing lightly underneath them. “Now quit ruining my moment.”

“Fine, I’ll stop.”

“I, Octavia Blake-Reyes, will always be your best friend, pain in the ass, greatest future roommate you will ever have in your life. And, with our piles of wife money, I will allow you first dibs on a ride on my new bike.”

“You’re a poetic genius, O.”

“I know. Wait until you hear the shit I pull out at my real wedding one day.”

That snaps Raven back to reality faster than anything else, Octavia’s words capable of sobering her up entirely. It’s still a fake marriage, one bound to end, no matter how much of the next 4 years she spends thinking about that kiss, let alone doing anything about it. Maybe they’ll both get lucky and the shock will wear off, Raven’s fixation on those seconds in the courthouse disappearing after a few days. Maybe that first check will smack the feeling of Octavia’s kiss right off her mouth and keep it away for good, freeing them both to move on. Or at least move on as much as possible with another person when they’re still married to each other.

It’s bound to happen. Neither one of them is going to sit around putting everyone they show interest in on the sideline, all for the sake of preserving some vows they made in a courthouse in front of a handful of people that think they truly love each other. And if they do love each other, the same way they love Clarke and Jasper and the rest of their bonehead friends sleeping around the yard, then they’ll go on pretending this whole marriage doesn’t exist, for the sake of not screwing up each other’s future any more than they already might have.

“You know, this is your cue to get all mushy about how I’m the greatest thing in your life right now.”

“I’m not drunk enough for that.”

“Come on, for me?”

“Fine,” Raven squeezes Octavia’s hand, cursing herself for just how many times her begging gets them into stupid situations like this, especially ones involving swapping vows. “I, Raven Reyes-Blake, promise to be the best friend and most convenient, money making wife you’ll ever have.”

Because she loves her, in the most platonic way physically possible.

“That’s it?”

“I’m saving the good stuff for my real wife.”

“Jerk,” Octavia tucks her head against Raven’s shoulder. They’ve slept like this countless times before, during late night sleep overs with Clarke curled against one of their backs, on road trips during the summer in the backseat of the car, on the couch during study sessions that last too long. And this time’s no different, Raven tries to convince herself as Octavia throws an arm around her waist. “Well, it was nice being your wife for a couple of hours at least.”

Raven doesn’t sleep the rest of the night, even as Octavia drifts off next to her, wondering if maybe, just maybe, they could have drawn things out just a little bit longer.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And we're free of the damn flashbacks! Thank you all for the support on this fic and that Pokemon AU!  
> Fair warning, updates on this fic may slow to once a week.
> 
> Feel free to drop by.  
> commandermari.tumblr.com

The longer Raven stares at the page, the more it feels like it’s mocking her, laughing at her. She can hear each letter cackling, every loop and line in her and Octavia’s signatures clawing through the screen and slapping her in the face. It’s real and she remembers it, and if the way Octavia’s sitting straight in her seat staring at the page, she remembers too. Raven can’t even face her, the two of them dead silent staring at the page. If there’s one thing they’re not, it’s quiet in an awkward situation, but neither has a smart remark that can make this go any better.

“There’s no way that’s real,” Clarke turns the screen away from them, looking over the copy of the license herself. All she has to do is read each line and realize everything matches up. There’s no Social Security numbers one digit off, no weird middle names separating them from another Raven Reyes and Octavia Blake in the city, not even a signature on the wrong line that makes everything null and void. Clarke searches and searches, but Raven knows she won’t find a single thing. “You guys are screwing with me.”

“Clarke,” Raven speaks, getting her friend’s attention. She takes a shaky breath, staring down at the tiles on the tabletop. This might be the worst secret they’ve kept between them, worse than that time Clarke hid the fact that she kissed Finn underneath the bleachers at one of Octavia’s soccer games from Raven for three months. Not even getting herself arrested for Clarke’s sake makes up for this; she’s going to spend the next 50 years of her life trying to gain her forgiveness. “It’s real.”

“No, it’s not. You guys would have told me.”

It’s real, and it’s biting them in the ass right now. Sneaking around planning the whole thing had been bad enough, keeping Clarke in the dark about everything. All the study sessions between her and Octavia trying to get their dorm application filled out, the movie nights at Raven’s that turned into sleep overs Clarke got banned from so they could put the finishing touches on their financial aid applications, making her party their own make-shift wedding celebration. Now they’re stuck here, watching her figure out the truth. It kills Raven, seeing Clarke pull the pieces together on her own, her own mouth useless at even trying to justify things, Octavia just shrinking further into her chair.

“We didn’t tell anyone,” Octavia adds, though it doesn’t seem to do much to lessen the blow of Clarke finding out her two best friends are married. Four years and not a single slip, no mentions of disappearing that morning for the wedding, no accidentally calling each other their wife, not even a word about the kiss in the courtroom they shared. “You two are the first ones to find out. Not even Bell or Sinclair knows.”

“How the hell did you hide this for four years?”

Clarke leans across the table, Raven waiting for her to grab a fistful of their shirts and shake the entire story out of them. Lexa catches on, scooting her laptop out of the way before it becomes a casualty in the wake of Clarke’s wrath. It’d be a fair trade, considering Lexa’s the one that broke their secrecy streak.

“We just didn’t tell anyone,” Raven admits, knowing it’s the truth. They didn’t go around introducing each other as their wife, slapping a hyphen and each other’s last name on every piece of paperwork they filled out, sporting rings on their fingers. Raven knows exactly where her ring is, hanging on a chain sitting in a jewelry box in her sock drawer; as for Octavia, she probably lost hers minutes after taking it off the day after Clarke’s party. “Super Sleuth over here is the first one to figure it out.”

“Excuse me for trying to make sure you two didn’t make a stupid decision that will ruin your lives,” Lexa snaps, looking all too proud that she just uncovered their circle of friend’s best kept secret. Probably payback for Octavia spilling the beans about the whole Bath and Body incident. “Looks like I’m about 4 years too late for that though.”

“Watch it, Lexa,” Octavia jumps back into the fray, taking everyone by surprise. Her standing up to her former captain’s more of a surprise than the whole marriage thing. Clarke and Raven push their chairs back a few inches, ready to put their differences aside and run out of the shop if the two former teammates decide to go at each other’s throats. Lexa just takes the order in stride, sitting straighter in her seat and waiting for Octavia to finish her thought. “Marrying Raven was the best stupid decision I ever made.”

Of all the things Octavia could have said, that might be the last one Raven expected, especially considering she just called her a shitty wife a few hours ago, before they ever remembered that they were wives. That line could have been their wedding vows, more heart to them than the court issued ones the officiant downtown had them reciting that afternoon.

The sentiment goes both ways, but Raven keeps quiet, not wanting to expose herself anymore. It’s bad enough Lexa already caught her daydreaming about their picket fence house, two kids, and a golden retriever. None of them need to know that the only reason she’d ever go back and stop herself from marrying Octavia in the name of fat government issued checks, is so she could marry Octavia for real reasons: love, happiness, all of that sappy gross stuff Clarke’s always saying about Lexa when she gets too drunk and emotional and her girlfriend’s not by her side.

Because if there’s one thing Raven Reyes does not do, it’s openly pine. She internalizes it, like any other normal person. But if Octavia drops another bomb like that one, she might just explode.

“You’re not too bad of a decision either, Blake.”

“Thank you. Except you’re still a shitty roommate.”

“Please. You’d be miserable living with anyone but me.”

They’ve already been practically living together longer than their time in the dorms. Raven spent more nights with Octavia sleeping on her floor or damn near kicking her out of her own bed than she did without, the younger girl hating the idea of staying in Bellamy’s apartment alone while he worked. After the fifth time, Raven just stopped locking her window completely, getting sick of having to wake up and let Octavia in, trusting that it was always her friend climbing into her room and not a serial killer. Only difference in the dorm is that they each have their own bed and Sinclair’s not yelling at Octavia for riding her bike through the front yard when she comes home.

“They’d probably know how to do their own laundry.”

“Excuse you, I’m just milking your generosity for as long as I can.”

It’s not that Raven doesn’t know how, it’s that she doesn’t have time to walk across the complex to the laundry room, sort everything by lights and darks and jeans and towels, sit around waiting for it to wash and dry, then haul it all back to the dorm and put it away. And if it really bothered Octavia, she wouldn’t take Raven’s laundry bag with her every Sunday and dump the freshly cleaned clothes on top of her still sleeping body. Sometimes, if Raven’s had a particularly nasty week between labs and lectures and meetings with her advisor, she wakes up to everything hung and folded in the right drawers, Octavia still working on putting her own things away.

“Well, have fun going commando the rest of the week,” Octavia taunts, Raven remembering that her and Clarke’s last minute arrest cut laundry night short, her favorite pair of Batwoman boy shorts and more still in the bag by the door. “I’m sure my next roommate will be a little bit more of a functioning adult.”

“Oh, because you’re such an adult with your Flintstone vitamins in the bathroom?” Octavia mumbles something about a workout regimen and health benefits, excuses Lexa rolls her eyes at and definitely doesn’t believe coming from a collegiate soccer player. “Besides, will your next roommate steal pizza from staff meetings for you? I doubt it.”

“I can get my own pizza,” Raven cocks her eyebrow, knowing damn well every time they have pizza in their room it’s either stolen from a meeting when her boss isn’t looking, or Raven’s the one picking up the phone and ordering it. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Make your own dentist appointments too?”

“Wait, you schedule her appointments?” Clarke asks, thinking the phone anxiety that followed Octavia through high school up and disappeared the second she started college. It had, only because she and Raven struck a deal: Octavia gives her rides around campus on her bike, Raven takes care of any phone calls or appointments Octavia can’t do in person or over a computer. “Oh my God, I never pictured you guys being the domestic couple.”

“We’re not domestic,” Octavia nearly gags on the word. “That’s just things friends do.”

Friends can make appointments for each other. Friends can go with each other to those same appointments, because Octavia hates dentists and getting stabbed in the gums and Raven hates doctors and them hounding her about physical therapy, and it makes it a little less agonizing to have someone waiting when they step back into the waiting room. Friends do each other’s laundry because the other brings them food, because they won’t let each other starve or walk around campus smelling like a soldering iron in a locker room. Friends marry their friends because it works out for them both and spares them a life of paying back student loans.

Friends would give each other every moon, star, and planet in the whole damn galaxy if they asked, and even if they didn’t, just because they deserve it.

Or maybe that’s just Raven.

“And friends fight like old married couples too, right?”

“Spare us the cross examination, Lex,” Raven checks her watch. Any other day she’d be taking off for aerospace propulsions, but leave it to her professor to cancel class the one day she’s actually begging to be sitting in a mind-numbing lecture. “Can we talk about something else? Can Lexa go back to silently judging us for getting arrested?”

“Not happening. Not until you two explain why you couldn’t tell me you were together,” Clarke sits back in her chair, like she’s ready to pull the entire story out of the pair piece by agonizing piece. Raven would almost rather face Lexa in full courtroom mode than this. “I can wait here all day until somebody talks.”

“Clarke?” Lexa breaks the stare down between everyone. “You have class in five minutes.”

“Son of a bitch,” Clarke scrambles to throw her things back in her back, Lexa following suit. “This conversation isn’t over. Dinner at our place, got it?”

Lexa groans, knowing she’s in for another long night, one that might end with another run in from security if the three friends start getting too heated. Octavia doesn’t seem worried, giving Clarke a half-hearted wave as she stands from the table.

“Whatever you say, Griff.”

Clarke stomps away from the table, making a detour at the counter to order another coffee, leaving Lexa shoving the last of her things in her bag.

“She’ll come to terms with it,” Octavia and Raven let out twin scoffs. They’ll all be 90 and in nursing homes with dementia and Clarke will still give them shit for it every chance she gets, the only part of their glory days that she’ll bother remembering. And Raven will still be there replaying that damn courthouse kiss in her head. “Eventually. Maybe. In the meantime, if you guys need help dealing with this, let me know. I’ll talk to my boss and see if she can help.”

 

“So, that went about as well as I thought it would.”

Raven sits on top of Octavia’s bed, watching her pace around the room looking for all of her gear before heading off to class and practice. Their ride back to the dorm had been silent, the two of them stewing over the whole situation and Clarke’s reaction in their own little worlds.

It makes sense for her to be angry. They had been lying to her for years, about how they got into the dorms together, how Octavia showed up with brand new customized soccer cleats for her first official game, how Raven sprung for a top shelf bottle of vodka to celebrate surviving another first week of college. They didn’t even have the guts to tell her themselves, having to find out from her girlfriend that her two best friends went a pulled a stunt like this right under her nose and hid it from her. Even in Raven’s own head, the forgetting they were married part sounds like a bad excuse, one she wouldn’t believe if she was in her shoes watching Clarke and Octavia do the same thing.

What doesn’t make sense is all her talk about them being together, how she’s insisting things between them are beyond just a piece of paper with their signatures on it. Whatever it is she’s seeing that makes them look like a couple is all in her head.

Raven would know, considering it’s all in her head too. More so than usual, thanks to that glaring reminder of their marriage at Lexa’s hand.

“We’re not seriously going over there later, are we?” Octavia asks, throwing one of her cleats in her bag, digging through piles of clothes on the floor for the other. For her being the laundry expert of the room, she sucks at keeping things organized, relying on what she calls “strategically organized piles” to get dressed every time she leaves the room.

“I don’t know about you, but I am,” Octavia looks at Raven like she’s lost it. If Raven had a mirror back then, it’d probably be the same face she made when Octavia snuck into her room that night with copies of an estimated financial aid report in hand, dropping down on one knee and proposing. “I know Clarke kind of went off the deep end-“

“Kind of? Rae, she was ready to hold us hostage in a coffee shop. She probably would have started ripping our teeth out the second the barista turned around.”

“Can you blame her though? Like you wouldn’t freak out if you found out me and her had been married and never mentioned it?”

“Yeah, but that’s different.”

“How would that be different?”

Octavia hesitates, turning her search for the missing cleat towards their shared closet. It’s the same situation either way: Best Friend A marries Best Friend B and leaves Best Friend C in the dark. Nothing changes, except where Clarke’s ready to hold a full blown interrogation, Octavia would probably just pelt them with soccer balls. Raven knows she’d whip out a pack of fireworks and leave them with a few sleepless nights, maybe one for every year they kept the secret from her.

“I don’t know, just, whatever. She’s still overreacting.”

Overreacting or not, they still have to make it right before years of friendship goes down the drain over it. Whether Octavia wants to be a part of that apology and explanation or not, that’s up to her. Raven’s not about to put another friendship on the line over this.

“We should probably talk about this.”

“What’s there to talk about?” Practice jerseys and grass stained shorts fly from the closet, missing the duffel bag parked in the middle of the floor. As if their entire existences didn’t get flipped upside down by a deal they made four years earlier, one they have to deal with before any of them walk across that stage at graduation.

“Like, what are we going to do about it?”

“About Clarke and Lexa? I doubt they’ll say anything about it. Unless Clarke gets drunk one night and goes off about it,” Octavia pops her head out for a second. “Actually, there’s a chance that might happen. New plan: get Clarke to quit drinking for the rest of her life.”

“No, I mean about us,” The flying barrage of clothes stops, a pair of balled up neon green socks bouncing off the dresser between their beds. Raven scolds herself, because there’s no “us” to talk about, just a marriage that they happen to both be willing, consenting parties in, one neither of them was ever supposed to talk about again. So much for that part of the plan. “We’re getting a divorce, right?”

It sounds like an obvious question with an even more obvious answer. They already got their last financial aid checks in the mail weeks ago, they’re both graduating soon, leaving them with absolutely zero reasons to even stay married anymore. That had to be part of their original agreement somewhere, that the second they were done with school they would call it quits and go back to the legally single life. They should have thrown it in their vows somewhere, until degrees do us part.

“Divorce?” Octavia stands shock still in the doorway of the closet, hand gripping her missing cleat like the damn thing’s about to tear away and go screaming down the hallway. She kind of looks like she wants to do that herself. Instead, she shrugs and makes her way towards her bag, throwing the cleat in and sitting across from Raven on the opposite bed. “Yeah, I guess we do have to get that figured out.”

“You sound pretty sure about that.”

She tries to ignore the way her heart skips at the thought of them not splitting up, of them keeping up with this fake little cozy domestic life together, just moving it out of the dorm and into an apartment somewhere. One that doesn’t charge a ridiculous fee for a pet, maybe so they can get that golden retriever when it’s a puppy. Or maybe something smaller and less likely to tear up the pillows while they’re out for the day, like a ferret. Octavia’s always wanted one of those, nearly bribing the RA for their dorm into letting her smuggle one in with promises of free food for a month.

“No, I am. It’s just weird, you know? Two hours ago I didn’t even remember I was married, now I’m getting a divorce,” She pauses, looking everywhere around the room except at Raven. “But it makes sense, right? I mean, you’re probably gonna go work somewhere fancy like NASA, and Indra’s been talking about some pro scouts coming to games to see me play. Not like we’re gonna be strapped for cash anymore.”

“Speak for yourself. You ever seen how little pro soccer players get played?” Octavia laughs, but it’s uneasy, far too heavy as it drags out of her chest. “You’re right. I guess that’s why Lexa said she’d talk to her boss.”

“Yeah, probably won’t hurt having one of the best lawyers in town on our side.”

“Plan on making things difficult, Blake?”

It should be a pretty amicable split, no owned property to worry about or joint bank accounts to split. They walked into this marriage with their own things and they can just as easily leave with them, sparing them the courtroom battles.

“I don’t know, your car is pretty decent. I’ll make sure you get The Monstrosity though,” Raven rolls her eyes at the idea of them fighting over either one of those pieces of junk, throwing one of Octavia’s own pillows back at her. She catches it and nearly throws it back when her alarm goes off, a sign that she’s already running late for the dat. “I can ditch if you want to go talk to Lexa’s boss right now.”

“No, don’t worry about it. I’ll call Lex, ask her what we should do before we go over there.”

“Okay,” Octavia grabs her bag from the ground and makes her way to the door. “Meet me after practice so we can head to Clarke’s?”

Raven nods and Octavia heads out. The door swings shut behind her, leaving Raven alone for the first time since getting hauled out of lock up the night before. She flops onto her side, burying her face in one of the pillows in the bed.

She’s utterly and entirely screwed.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early update because work will likely kick me into my own grave before I can actually update tomorrow.
> 
> commandermari.tumblr.com

“Okay, what am I supposed to be looking for?”

Lexa sighs through the phone pressed against Raven’s ear as she digs through the back of the closet, dragging out the fireproof safe Sinclair gave her for Christmas after moving into the dorm. Fireproof, he claims, more so to protect the documents inside from his own daughter than an actual fire. Raven calls it overly cautious and a little bit offensive, even though everything of importance sits in it, from her and Octavia’s high school diplomas to Octavia’s hunting knife that might be considered contraband in the dorm, all things that it might be smart to keep safe in the event of a Raven induced fire. And if Raven’s right, their marriage certificate should be there too.

_“It’s a piece of paper. It literally says ‘certificate of marriage’ on it. Judge’s signature, county seal, all of that should be on there.”_

“And you’re absolutely sure your boss needs this thing?”

_“Raven, I’ve been interning at this office for two years. I’m fairly certain I know what documents my boss needs for a divorce proceeding, and your marriage certificate is absolutely one of those.”_

“I’m not appreciating this attitude right now, Lexa,” Raven flips through the papers. Birth certificates, Raven’s adoption papers, each of their shot records, old tax records, the title to Raven’s car, everything but their damn marriage certificate. “How hard can it be to find a fucking piece of paper?”

_“Please tell me you didn’t lose it.”_

Of course she didn’t. The whole reason she has the certificate is so they wouldn’t lose it. No offense to Octavia, but there’s not a thing in their room that she hasn’t lost at least once. Soccer balls have gone missing, not even turning up in obvious places like the closet or under one of their beds, entire outfits never make it to the laundry room, including ones that are mostly taken from Raven’s half of the closet, even full plates of food just seem to up and walk away from her.

Even though the whole marriage was her idea, there was no way in hell Raven was letting a document like that out of her sight and into Octavia’s hands, no matter how many times she begged and pleaded and tried to pass herself off as a responsible adult. Maybe if her first move as a legal adult hadn’t been getting married for all the wrong reasons, they’d have a different story. But now Raven gets to be elbows deep in a safe trying to find a damn piece of paper, Lexa harping in her ear about the responsibilities of legal documents and how she really needs to come up with a more effective filing system for these kind of things. Chucking them in a safe is a great idea, no matter what Ms. Lawyer Pants insists, never failing Raven until today.

_“You’re sure you actually put it in the safe, right?”_

“Do you really have that little faith in me?” Lexa pauses on the other end of the line, too long for Raven’s comfort, knowing she probably had a slew of comebacks after their morning intervention. Whatever faith she might have had, seeing Raven as the more mature member of the trio, probably flew out the window when Octavia sold her out on the extent of her fireworks collection leading to their infamous assault. “Please, don’t answer that.”

_“I still don’t understand how you can ignore that you’re married, let alone to your best friend,”_ Raven rolls her eyes hard enough for Lexa to feel it over the phone, flipping the stack of papers over and rifling through it again, hoping the certificate is just upside down or folded in half in the middle of it. _“I get uncomfortable if I forget to take my contacts out before taking a shower.”_

They’re just that damn good at keeping their word to each other. Doesn’t hurt that it just never came up, not with all the stress of everyday life creeping up on them. Her last year of undergrad left Raven sleeping everywhere but her dorm the week before finals, her bed across from Octavia’s empty as she slumped across desks in the library or sprawled across tables in the engineering labs. With Octavia on the road almost every week during soccer season, there’s not a lot of time to talk about it, even if they actually do remember it.

“Like I said, long story that I might be able to explain if this stupid certificate would quit hiding from me.”

Another pass through the stack leaves a few slivers of paper fluttering to the floor. Raven scoops them up, tossing them back in the lockbox: a ticket stub from Octavia’s first championship soccer game her freshman year of college, one Raven and Clarke drove six hours to go to, falls into the box first. A crumpled invitation to a ceremony from Raven’s last year of undergrad follows, one where she got an award from the mechanical engineering department chair himself, her whole group of friends taking up a whole row in the auditorium and breaking into cheers as she crossed the stage to accept it, Octavia and Sinclair sitting right in the middle waving as she posed for pictures.

_“And how far into this story do you get before you realize you’re in love with Octavia?”_

Raven rips the receipt from her last tuition payment straight down the middle.

“I am not in love with Octavia.”

Raven loves Octavia, there’s no questioning that. She married the girl because of how much she loves her. If Clarke or Lexa came up to her asking to do the same thing, she probably would have done it too. Hell, she would even do it for Monty too. It’s a best friend thing, like a slightly more extreme version of a pinky promise, all part of the territory. Only thing that means is that Raven Reyes is a damn gem when it comes to friendship, the kind of best friend people would sell their souls to have. Octavia just caught on to that idea a little early and actually did the damn thing in front of a judge.

Just because she loves her doesn’t mean she’s in love with her. Just because she’s not entirely thrilled about the idea of divorcing her doesn’t mean she’s in love with her. Just because she daydreams about real weddings and kisses that aren’t for show in front of some fake witnesses and picket fence houses with a mini-army of their own kids-

_“Would you like to try saying that again without your voice cracking?”_

Raven clenches her jaw shut, not trusting herself to speak, knowing the next words out of her mouth might very well be _“I am 100% in love with Octavia Blake.”_ She’s taking that secret to the grave, which might not actually be too far away if she doesn’t find that certificate.

“How about I tell you to go float yourself?”

_“Clearly you don’t want to talk about it,”_ She doesn’t want to talk about it, think about it, do anything with it. Not until this whole divorce thing is settled. Or until her and Octavia’s memories are so shot with age and too many nights drinking to even remember they were married in the first place. That’s probably begging for an eternity in the afterlife bound to Octavia’s side, or at least three back-to-back reincarnations together, forcing them to relive their stupid decisions. “ _Back to your marriage certificate. You’re sure Octavia doesn’t have it?”_

“Octavia would have lost it before we even got it from the judge,” Raven silently thanks Lexa for knowing how to drop a topic, a skill clearly not learned from Clarke. She throws the entire stack back in the safe, coming up empty. Not in the safe, not sitting somewhere on her desk, not even getting used as a bookmark somewhere. “Wherever it is, I put it there.”

_“When was the last time you actually saw it?”_

“Probably the day I got the safe.”

Raven keeps quiet about the fact that she’d been sleeping with the damn certificate under her mattress since they got it, not wanting to leave it out in the open somewhere, knowing Clarke had a tendency of letting herself in back when she was still living in a dorm room down the hall, and still not trusting Octavia enough to so much as look at it without Raven in the same room.

_“Do you actually remember physically putting the certificate in it?”_

She remembers a metric fuck ton of old assignments and the last semester’s textbooks surrounding her, waiting for their group’s traditional “get drunk as shit and burn every paper and assignment that can’t be reused in another class” night right after finals. That night would have been Octavia’s first experience with it, if her hardass captain ever let her leave their unofficial winter break practice; leave it to Lexa to already be raining on their parade, months before Raven even met her.

She remembers digging through the folder she’d been keeping every other important document Sinclair gave her before moving into the dorm for good, slipping the certificate out from under her mattress and tucking it between her and Octavia’s birth certificates. Because of course the first thing she thought to do after moving into the dorm was hijack all of Octavia’s paperwork before she could lose any more of it, keeping it safe with her own things.

She remembers not quite making it to the safe, sitting on the edge of her bed and looking at the certificate again. Months had passed and she still couldn’t shake the feeling of something being off, something that wasn’t getting fixed by them getting those first checks and actually rolling around on their shared bedroom floor with them. Finals that semester must have fried her brain, the idea of her possibly harboring feelings for her wife not even crossing her brain.

She remembers thinking she should get up before she gets any ideas of doing something really stupid, like actually talking to Octavia and seeing if maybe, just maybe, she’s feeling the same way, considering the two of them barely saw each other the last few days. The idea of a fake marriage counseling session to make sure they even survived the next three and a half years danced in her head until their door swung open, boxes of pizza, a 20 pack of cheap beer, and a blonde head that hadn’t seen a shower in days making their way into the room.

“Oh fuck.”

_“What happened?”_

“Clarke happened.”

_“I thought we established that Clarke didn’t know?”_

Clarke didn’t know until today, only because Raven nearly jumped off her bed, slamming the marriage certificate face down on her desk. And if it hadn’t been for Clarke already shoving a beer in her hand and going on a full blown rant on how that ridiculously hot asshole TA for her philosophy class docked her five points for one citation not being indented on her reference page, she might have realized that she just threw a slightly important document smack in the middle of her burn pile for later that night.

“Lex, I gotta go. I’ll see you at dinner.”

_“Raven, do not hang up! What do you mean Clarke-“_

Raven shows up at the tail end of practice to drag Octavia to Clarke and Lexa’s. Most of the team passes her as they head towards the locker room, throwing greetings as she trudges through the tunnel leading to the bleachers. She settles into leaning against the railing, watching the last two figures on the field.

Monroe’s in front of the net, hands on her head, nodding along as she listens to Octavia spouting off something about watching her left foot the next time she kicks. Raven watches as Octavia paces back a few steps, running towards the ball and sending it flying to the net. Whatever advice she threw out must have worked, Monroe diving for the ball and coming up with it between her gloves, grinning wide enough for even Raven to see from across the stadium.

They share a high five and talk for a few more minutes, leaving Raven stranded in the bleachers trying to drag herself out of her own fit of admiration over Octavia. It’s hard not to sit there and be proud of her, watching her come home day after day, throwing herself into every practice and game, always doing things like this for her team, going one step further to help them out. She’s probably the best damn captain the team’s ever had, half the reason they’re even set to go into championships for the second year in a row under her command.

Realizing she’s only making this whole “convincing herself she’s not in love with Octavia” thing worse, Raven tries to sneak out of the stadium with whatever shred of her pride is left intact. But Monroe catches her waiting, and with a quick goodbye and a congratulatory high five, Octavia’s sprinting across the field towards the stands, hoisting herself up on the railing.

“What’s up, wifey?”

Her blood pressure. Her stress. Her pulse at the fact that apparently wife has now become as casual a term of endearment that she really wishes would be a bit more than that.

“Don’t call me that,” Raven hisses, ignoring Octavia’s eye roll. Partly because Monroe’s still within earshot, tugging off her gloves as she heads to the locker room, mostly because that heart murmur of hers is begging to kick in at any second if Octavia keeps it up. “Not in public at least.”

“Keeping me your dirty little secret, Rae?”

“How are you so calm about this?”

Maybe because Octavia didn’t spend the entire morning turning their dorm room upside down and inside out looking for that marriage certificate. Or dumping the entire contents of all three of her desk drawers at work on the floor, desperately hoping she brought it there for some stupid reason thinking it’d be safe with Murphy, Fox, and Miller all working in the same office. Byrne, the student life center coordinator, had a field day catching her digging through four years’ worth of junk on the clock, ignoring the phone ringing off the hook just above her.

Maybe because she didn’t accidentally let her drunk best friend throw their marriage certificate on a college assignment funeral pyre years ago.

“It’s not the end of the world,” Octavia shrugs, still keeping her grip on the railing so she doesn’t drop the couple of feet down to the concrete below. It takes every ounce of Raven’s will not to look at her straining arms, knowing the second she does she’ll join Lexa over in the heart eyes club. “You know, we could probably get some more free shit out of this if we play it right.”

“Because the thousands of dollars from the government wasn’t enough?”

“I’m talking bigger than that. I mean walking into places and taking turns proposing to each other,” Raven rolls her eyes as Octavia hauls herself over the railing. She slings her arm around Raven’s shoulder and leads her through the stadium. “Big fancy speeches, get the fake tears rolling, and we get a complimentary dinner and a bottle of wine.”

“Do you have no dignity, Blake?”

“Not when it’s standing in the way of me and free Olive Garden breadsticks.”

“You have such high standards.”

Octavia pauses in front of the locker room door, throwing Raven a wink before she pushes the door open to change and get ready to head out to their sentencing at Clarke and Lexa’s.

“No wonder I settled for you.”

 

Twenty minutes later they climb into Raven’s car, Octavia free of mud and grass stains, Raven somewhat sure that she’s not going to drive in the opposite direction of Clarke and Lexa’s place and drop to her knees in the middle of Olive Garden for those breadsticks. Octavia commandeers the radio, blaring one of her soccer playlists notorious for taking her hours to put together, a craft Raven mocks every time she sees her huddled up in the corner of her bed, headphones on and piecing songs together with more precision than a brain surgeon.

“You know what I just realized?” Octavia turns the music down after a few minutes.

“I don’t know if I can hear any more surprises today.”

Accessory to art theft, Octavia’s wife, a marriage certificate she basically handed to Clarke to destroy: there’s not much else that can top any of those on the surprise list, but Raven holds her tongue, knowing that after a day like today, she wouldn’t be surprised to find out she’s living the Princess Diaries and Octavia’s the princess of a small European country. If she’s a foreign dignitary, then Octavia can make up her own rules, ones that legally nullify their marriage and leave them free to run around the grounds of her palace, unmarried and not needing that marriage certificate that’s nothing more than ashes in a landfill right about now.

“Our anniversary is coming up.”

That much Raven remembers, three days after Octavia’s birthday, the memory of the courthouse wedding still fresh in her mind. Now the day’s only three weeks away. Like they don’t have enough to deal with already: finals fall just days before, Octavia’s got a soccer tournament with games every weekend until the end of the semester, and they’ve still got to survive the actual graduation ceremony in three weeks. Just the thought of the days ahead makes Raven wish for a nuclear annihilation to hit, sparing her the stress of it all.

“Are we planning on celebrating?”

They’ll still be married by the time it rolls around, Lexa assuring her that even if Raven goes groveling to her boss to start the process now, it could still take up to a year for it to be finalized, all the papers signed and filed. But since it’s the first year either of them even remembers the day, it might just be worth throwing a little something together, even if it’s just stealing Clarke’s Netflix account and drinking cheap beer until they’re too drunk to remember the occasion.

“Sure am. I’m thinking second honeymoon, drive up to Bethany Beach, get a little room at a bed and breakfast. Real classy and romantic.”

“We never even had a first honeymoon.”

“What, you don’t count getting drunk and spooning on Clarke’s trampoline that night as our honeymoon?” Octavia looks over at Raven, shaking her head at the girl’s new enthusiasm over making every marriage reference she can. “Sheesh, no wonder we’re getting divorced. You don’t even appreciate my romantic advances.”

“Can we not joke about this?” Raven snaps a little harder than she expected, gripping the steering wheel tighter. Octavia shuts off the radio completely, staring her best friend down. She can’t look at her, fearing if she does, Octavia will see the words spelling out her true feelings scrawled over her face.

Raven focuses on driving, just a few blocks away from their destination. It’s just like she expected, Octavia thinking it’s all fun and games, just like she did when she was a broke and 17 and proposing to her best friend. She’ll probably just shrug it off if Raven drops the flaming marriage certificate bomb on her right now. It’s like Raven’s the only one actually worried about this whole situation blowing up in their faces, no amount of jokes capable of fixing the fact that they’re still screwed into this mess for who knows how much longer.

“What’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” Raven lies, eyes glued to the stop sign in front of them, only shifting to watch the car turning in the opposite lane before cruising through the intersection. “I’m just tired of hearing all this stuff already. Besides, didn’t we have a deal not to talk about it?”

“It’s not gonna get any better now,” Octavia adds as they pull up in front of the house, Clarke and Lexa’s cars sitting in the driveway. A pair of blinds on the far end of the house shake closed, the shadow of what’s undeniably Clarke waiting for them to arrive bolting across the room. “Should’ve stayed home if you wanted a night of people not giving you shit.”

“Impossible. You live with me.”

“You really want me to stop? Fine, I’ll knock it off.”

The car comes to a shudder as Raven shuts the engine off. She reaches for the door handle, ready to walk up the steps and face the jury, Clarke already leaning against the open door with a ten page list of questions tucked in her back pocket, Lexa probably clearing the table and breaking out her nicest pens to start getting signatures on divorce papers.

Octavia stops her, tugging her back in the seat before she can even pop the door open. Seconds pass before Raven wills herself to look at her, expecting a look that screams “you’re a buzzkill.” Instead, Octavia’s the one struggling to look back at her, eyes down towards the gear shift between their seats.

“I don’t want you pissed at me over this,” She manages to look up, and Raven swears she’s back to her bedroom in Sinclair’s house, Octavia all too desperate and terrified waiting for her reaction. “You’re my best friend. I’m not about to let that change because of this mess I got us in.”

Raven nods, waiting until Octavia lets go of her wrist and climbs out of the car herself. A muffled greeting to Clarke slips through as she shuts the door, leaving Raven in the car alone.

She’s never letting those three words slip out to Octavia.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing like showing up two weeks late with an update. Thank you caffeine for sponsoring this chapter.
> 
> commandermari.tumblr.com

There’s a lot of things Raven’s not sure of. She’s not sure why some bureaucratic government assholes decided it would be a great idea to cut funding to the space program. She’s not sure why she can’t figure out the damn recipe to Sinclair’s pancakes, her pride too great to simply ask him for it. And she’s especially not sure why dinner ended up with a broken wine glass, one baked potato chucked at a kitchen cabinet, and the echo of doors slamming through Clarke and Lexa’s house.

What she is sure of is that Lexa’s somewhere in the backyard, probably on the phone trying to figure out if she can place a restraining order on all three of her dinner guests, Clarke’s roaming around the halls half crying, half plotting murder, and she’s here with Octavia, slumped against the shower in the master bathroom, door locked tight behind them.

“Well, this could have gone a lot worse.” Octavia’s head thumps against the glass shower door.

Things could have gone a lot better. They could have showed up to the house with flowers, an apology for putting their hosts through a day of hell. They could have sat down at the table and had a calm conversation like adults easing into the whole missing marriage certificate. They could have figured out a solution and toasted over glasses of wine to them finally getting their acts together just in time for graduation, knowing this whole fake marriage, real divorce thing would work itself out.

But no. _Someone_ had to start the second they sat down for dinner, before poor Lexa could even get the salad bowl down. As if Raven needed more evidence of Lexa’s complete lack of an ability to keep secrets, Clarke launched into a full on tirade of how she’s somehow responsible for their marriage certificate going missing, Lexa fumbling some excuse about burning potatoes before Clarke could expose her.

Which led to Octavia nearly throttling Raven next to her, considering Raven managed to avoid telling her that the certificate was missing in the first place. Telling her the truth about the consequences of combining pyromania, post-finals stress, alcohol, and Clarke didn’t make that explanation go any smoother.

And that little confession is how Octavia’s butter knife wound up impaling the still steaming French loaf Lexa brought out to the table.

“The wine glass isn’t our fault,” While it didn’t leave Octavia’s hand and go sailing across the dining room, her head was the target. One that Clarke missed by a good 3 feet, even with Octavia sitting still in her seat, the glass shattering on the wall behind them. “But if Lexa ever speaks to us again, I’ll tell her I’ll replace it. Best set of wine glasses Bed, Bath, and Beyond can offer.”

“Yeah, doubt that’s gonna work out for us. Apparently those were some priceless family heirloom her great-great-great-great-grandmother smuggled out of Greece or something.”

“Then why the hell was she letting us use them?”

“Apparently she made the mistake thinking that we aren’t a couple of barbarians.”

_“Locking yourselves in my bathroom isn’t stopping us from having this conversation!”_ Clarke’s scream through the door sends Raven jumping right out of her skin, clinging to the edge of the shower for dear life. A flurry of bangs on the door and juggling of the knob mark Clarke’s failure to get inside. _“Hiding your marriage from me wasn’t enough? Now you have to blame me for you guys not being able to get a divorce?”_

Clarke’s got them pinned. No window to scurry out of and make a break back to the car. No laundry shoot to crawl through and make an epic action movie-esque exit. Their only way out lies in the bedroom, Clarke showing no signs of letting them even get a toe out of the door before lunging at them.

“Can we also blame you if I don’t pass my finals?”

_“Go float yourself, Raven!”_

“You know, this is always how I pictured myself dying,” Octavia waves around the bathroom, a still soaking wet towel on the floor, an overflowing laundry hamper next to them. “Locked in a tiny room, all thanks to you and Clarke.”

“Hey, Clarke is the one that started it.” Really, everyone started some part of this whole mess. Clarke torched their marriage certificate. Octavia brought up them getting referred to as married in the first place. Lexa went digging and found their license. Raven’s the only one in the clear out here, practically innocent in the whole mess. Aside from stupidly agreeing to marry Octavia and even more stupidly actually going through with it, of course.

_“You know what? I’m not even mad about taking the blame for the marriage certificate.”_

“You sure about that? I think the splintering wood in the middle of your door says otherwise.”

“Yeah, Clarke starts it,” Octavia rolls her eyes. “You just continue it.”

_“I’m mad that I had the damn proof in my hands that you two have been lying to me, and I still had to wait three and a half years to find out the truth!”_

It’s not Raven’s fault that Clarke can’t just let things go. She keeps going on and on about 14 years of friendship circling the drain over this, not wanting to put it aside for a couple damn seconds so they can figure things out. She’s more than willing to sit down and let Clarke yell at her for hours about it all, from not hearing about Octavia’s proposal seconds after it happened to not being a witness at the actual ceremony, only if they can quit running into every single roadblock possible on the way.

“She’ll tire herself out eventually,” Her box wine fueled rage has to die out eventually, if they’re lucky, before she busts through the door. Or Lexa will get sick of hearing her try to tear down the walls and drag her off somewhere to calm down, letting Raven and Octavia make their escape. “Just have to sit and wait until then.”

“Well, while we’re waiting, maybe you and I should have a little talk.”

“Talk about what?”

_“How you two are the worst best friends in the history of best friendship?”_ The cherry on top of their already shitty evening, Clarke listening in on whatever serious conversation Octavia decides has to happen in the middle of a bathroom. _“You know who would never get married behind my back? Wells! Wells would’ve let me be the maid of honor!”_

“Do you wanna start with why you decided to hide the whole certificate thing from me? Or why you’ve been acting so weird all night?”

_“Wells would’ve let me get strippers for the bachelorette party!”_

If there’s a way to ignore Clarke and Octavia, Raven’s hoping she can find it in the cabinets under the sink, opening the door and digging through it, pretending Octavia didn’t just single her out for her behavior again. All she finds is bottle of shampoo, rolls of toilet paper, and a nearly empty jar of body glitter, which she might be able to throw in Clarke’s face to create a distraction. But it’s not about to do her any good with the Octavia thing, especially not when Octavia slams the door shut, nearly catching Raven’s hand in it.

Octavia waits for answers, ones Raven knows she can give. She hid the whole ‘Clarke going all Sailor Mars on their marriage certificate’ thing because it was a direct violation of the whole ‘not speaking about being married’ rule that they’d been sticking to pretty well for the six months beforehand. And considering it was one of the few rules both of them ever followed, whether set by themselves or some higher authority, Raven didn’t see the point in breaking a good thing. That, and she figured she would get it replaced eventually without Octavia ever knowing the difference, a scheme that got lost in the midst of junior level engineering classes slowly kicking her ass, only getting worse as senior year and graduate classes picked up.

It’s damn near impossible to not act weird, not when Octavia’s little promise about not letting their friendship tank over this whole mess is still ringing in her ears, right there next to Lexa’s own mention of how painfully obvious it is that Raven’s ass over elbows in love with Octavia. The whole part of Raven repeatedly zoning out in the few minutes of blissful peace during dinner doesn’t help either, not when she’s off in another round of her little fantasies where she somehow plucks up the courage to see if maybe, just maybe there’s a way to not tank their friendship and actually put those feelings she’s trying to strangle out of her chest to use.

Yeah, maybe they won’t do disgusting things like their friends, Lexa pouring Clarke a glass of wine and kissing her on the head before she walks back to the kitchen to put the bottle away. But Raven would know Octavia likes drinking rum and Coke out of her Wonder Woman mug and gladly bring it to the living room to her when she’s already wrapped up in her blanket getting ready for movie night. They won’t fill the mantle of their fireplace with cutesy framed pictures of their last vacation together with their families or the mini-road trips they take to bed and breakfasts a day’s drive away. But Raven would damn sure have a folder hidden way, way out of view of any prying eyes on her phone solely holding her favorite pictures of her and Octavia together, ones taken on lazy mornings when they don’t want to crawl out of bed or after one of Octavia’s soccer games when she’s still all gross and sweaty and hugging Raven from behind.

Right now’s Raven’s perfect opportunity to just open her mouth and admit it. The last shreds of the sunset bouncing through the skylight practically puts a spotlight on the both of them, Clarke’s continued ranting about strip clubs and a party bus and bride-to-be sashes comes as close as they’ll get to some romantic ballad softly playing in the background, and if Raven finds a lighter to go along with Lexa’s ridiculous candle collection, she’s got the whole scene set. All she has to do is say it all, leave everything on the bathroom floor, and hope Octavia feels the same way.

But the sun sets behind the house, Clarke climbs off the bachelorette party horse and back onto the horrible secret keeping friends one, and since Lexa’s apparently smart enough to keep lighters away from what’s probably her highly flammable body glitter, Raven comes up short.

So she sits there, staring at her hands tucked into the tops of her boots, wishing she could shrink down and disappear into the grout between the tiles.

“Rae, I will literally take the stupidest excuse you have right now. As long as you just say something.”

_“Don’t think that’s gonna work with me! I want real answers! Ones I can have backed up with a polygraph test!”_

“Oh, for the fucking love of-“ Octavia perches herself on the toilet tank, reaching up to the air vent at the top of the wall. “Lexa! Get your ass upstairs and get your girlfriend out of here before I smother her with her own gross, soaking wet floor towels!”

_“Clarke! We have a hamper in there for a reason!”_

Lexa’s voice travelling through the vent gives Raven hope, that Lexa’s fear of having to deal with mildew will drag her upstairs, get Clarke away from the door, and let her take off in an Olympic paced sprint right out of the door and back to the car. Octavia can find her own way home, or spend the night at the house, as long as she stays away from the dorm until her need to ask Raven questions that she’ll choke on the answer to goes away. Or until they get that new certificate and their divorce gets finalized.

_“Blake, you backstabber! Twice in one-“_ Clarke gets cut off by the bedroom door opening, a likely pissed off Lexa glaring at her from the doorway. _“Lex, I promise I had it hanging on the back of the door. It probably slipped off when the happy couple over there barricaded themselves in there.”_

_“We wouldn’t have this problem if you didn’t insist on using the same towel for days in a row.”_

_“I’m saving this house money, cutting our laundry loads in half.”_

_“And how much of that money is going to go towards the mold removal we’ll eventually need?”_

Their bickering wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t taking place right in front of the bathroom door, further sealing Raven into her fate of a long, painful, Clarke’s towel mold and Octavia’s impatience filled death. With Octavia climbing down from the toilet and sitting across from Raven on the floor, back against the counter, waiting for her to explain herself, Raven might prefer trying to break up the lover’s quarrel on the other side of the door.

“Look, I messed up, okay?”

“Which part? Where you got rid of the one thing that says we’re actually married? Or where you just sat there and let Clarke rip me a new one over something that’s equally your fault?”

Sure, she sat there silent during their sad attempt at a first course, giving more of her attention to Lexa’s soon-to-be neglected strawberry spinach salad instead of defending Octavia. While Raven picked out diced pieces of a green apple way too sour to be appreciated, Clarke pinned the whole thing on Octavia, even somehow twisting the story around to make it seem like if Octavia hadn’t been so irresponsible, Raven would never have needed to hold onto the certificate anyways, never letting it get anywhere near Clarke’s drunk hands.

“I know, I should have tried to stop her. But you know how Clarke gets. What was I supposed to say?”

That it was just as much her fault for saying yes in the first place, because it’s not like Octavia twisted her arm or forged her signature on the marriage license downtown. That even though Octavia’s lost her own driver’s license three times, it’s shockingly not her fault that the document she wasn’t even in possession of went up in flames. That since this is a marriage, no matter how terrible it might be, she’s still more than willing to share the burden with Octavia for the things that go wrong.

_“Reusing a towel is totally normal. I read it on Buzzfeed.”_

_“How is that even helpful? You’re just rubbing dead, wet skin and dirt back on yourself.”_

_“I’m clean when I get out of the shower, Lexa.”_

_“Clean is a very subjective term, Clarke.”_

“Anything! I would have been okay with you bursting into song if it would have kept Clarke from chucking a glass at my head,” A hammering on the door and a vague threat from Lexa about priceless, irreplaceable Woods’ family heirlooms interrupts, Octavia only managing to speak again as Clarke goes off on how the week she didn’t shower while they all went camping doesn’t count against her. “You just sat there watching. Just like how you’re just sitting here staring at me now.”

“Maybe I don’t know what to say, okay?”

Not even those 3 words that Raven’s practically trying to erase out of her vocabulary could save this conversation now. They’d just dig her deeper into a pit, spark a whole new argument between her and Octavia over not talking about things. And with Clarke still able to hear everything on the other side of the door, she’d probably flip over never being confided in either.

“Wow, so all that time you were at the dorm alone or sitting there watching our best friend make me feel like the worst person in the world, you couldn’t think of a damn thing to say?”

“You mean when I wasn’t tearing our room apart looking for everything we need to get out of this mess? Or when I had to listen to you guys go at each other and completely ignore how I feel in this situation?” Octavia looks down at the floor, picking at the sole of her shoes. Even Clarke quiets outside, a swear mumbled under her breath. “Yeah, you forgot this affects me to, didn’t you?”

“Raven, that’s not what I-“

“When’s the last time you asked me how I felt about this?” Octavia opens her mouth to answer, but Raven stops her. “And I mean really asked me, without making some stupid joke before or trying to lighten the mood or some bull shit after I tell you how I feel.”

“If you wanted me to ask, you shouldn’t have told me to never bring it up.”

“I shouldn’t have to ask my wife to worry about how I feel.”

They stay silent, the bathroom so quiet Raven can hear Clarke and Lexa holding their breath on the other side of the door. No eye contact, no apologies, not even the awkward scuffling of shoes on the tile. Maybe this is how they’ll live out the rest of this mess, blacklisting the entire conversation for the rest of their lives, letting Lexa’s boss do all the talking for them.

“Guess it’s a good thing we’re not gonna be wives anymore.”

Raven picks at a crack in one of the tiles. If only this could be the kick in the mental shins she needs to get over that age old crush turned into a deeper feeling she’s still refusing to admit out loud, even in her own mind. The blow that knocks the whole idea of wishing Octavia would stay her wife out of her head for good.

“I’ll be surprised if we’re even friends walking out of this.”

Octavia snaps her head up at that.

_“Whoa, okay, guys? Let’s maybe go talk this out in the living room.”_

“No, Clarke. I think someone made things perfectly clear,” Raven can practically taste the oil stains on the bottom of her boot, Octavia glaring at her from across the room. “Didn’t think I was that bad of a wife.”

“Yeah, you’re not that much better of a best friend either.”

_“Oh, fuck me sideways.”_

_“Lexa!”_

It’s a cheap shot, and Raven knows it. She doesn’t even need to hear the commentary on the other side of the door, Clarke and Lexa ready to go into damage control mode, willing to forgive the whole glass shattering, bread stabbing, house commandeering stand-off of a night they’ve been dragged into.

Octavia drops her gaze, shoulders sagging as the words settle in. Raven feels them, every ounce of weight falling on Octavia’s shoulder piling up in her own chest, dragging her heart straight to her stomach until it’s scraping the cold tile floor.

“Screw you, Raven,” Her hands ball into fists at the words, shoulders tensing as she stands and moves away from the counter. Octavia swings the bathroom door open, nearly knocking the doorknob straight into the wall. “Get your lawyer to call me when I can sign the fucking divorce papers.”

Clarke and Lexa watch Octavia brush out of the bedroom, footsteps echoing down the hall, followed by the front door slamming. Still seated against the shower door, Raven’s head drops to her knees, knowing there’s no coming back from that argument now. World record for fastest moment of regret belongs to her, that plaque probably coming in the mail the same day she gets those divorce papers.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promise y'all, we're hitting the point where this turns to pure fluff soon.
> 
> commandermari.tumblr.com

Nearly two weeks after the dinner that destroyed the world, Octavia’s still not staying at the dorm.

Wherever she is, couch surfing at her teammates’ places, camping out in the 24-hour gym near campus, climbing through the wardrobe to Narnia stashed in Clarke and Lexa’s attic, she’s ignoring Raven. She’s screening her phone calls, Raven getting Octavia’s voicemail after half a ring. Clarke at least gets answered with a “fuck off” before Octavia hangs up on her, probably knowing Raven’s right there next to Clarke, brains nearly grinding up on each other with how hard she leans into Clarke trying to hear anything Octavia says. Her texts go unopened, even the ones that fill up pages, ones Octavia can’t get the gist of just watching the first few words pop up in her notifications.

Raven knows she’s been back in the room a few times. An empty hanger on the back of their closet door replaces her away game jersey, the communications book she’s touched a whopping 3 times throughout the semester disappears from her desk, and her phone charger that never leaves the socket between their beds, the one Raven always tries to fight her for, is long gone. The only trace of Octavia even living in the room is the laundry she left behind and the sheets and pillows on her bed.

“Oh, you’re kidding me,” Clarke groans the second she lets herself in the room. “Raven, how long have you been like this?”

By this, Clarke might mean holding a stakeout in the room, determined to catch Octavia in the act. Maybe she took the liberty of using one of her skip days from her mechanics’ lab, called down to the office and told Murphy she had a highly contagious stomach flu and would not hesitate to go down there and puke all over his desk if he didn’t cover her for the day, and bribed the RA on duty with donuts to text her if Octavia walked past the front desk. But it guarantees there’s no way in hell Octavia’s getting in or out of that room without Raven knowing and putting an end to their standoff.

“This has to be the saddest thing I have ever seen. Like worse than that time Lexa started stress crying during finals when she found out otters have favorite rocks.”

Actually, Clarke probably means walking in and finding Raven curled up on Octavia’s bed, clutching her favorite pillow in one arm and a bag of potato chips in the other, Netflix paused in the middle of an episode of _The X-Files_. Even Raven can’t deny that it’s pretty damn sad. At least Clarke didn’t show up 10 minutes earlier when she checked the scores for the soccer team's last away game, finding out Octavia helped win the game with a goal and 2 assists, and started crying, half out of pride, half out of misery that she didn’t get to send her usual onslaught of live texts for Octavia to read in the locker room.

“How dare you compare me to that sappy Sapphic loser you call your girlfriend.”

“Put on some pants, we’re getting you some fresh air,” Clarke moves for the door, popping her head back in when she doesn’t hear Raven making an effort to put the chips down and unpry herself from the pillow. “And yeah, I know you’re not wearing pants. You never wear pants when you’re moping.”

 

Sporting what might be a clean pair of jeans, at least Raven hopes since Octavia hasn’t been around to do their laundry and Raven hasn’t mustered up the courage to head to the laundry room herself, knowing defeat awaits her at the hands of a coin operated machine possibly older than her, Raven finds herself at the rental counter of the bowling alley with Clarke.

An apology outing is what Clarke calls it, despite having already groveled at Raven’s feet for forgiveness the night of the dinner, long after Octavia stormed out and everyone had time to realize they were in the eye of the worst shit storm of their lives. Because nothing salvages a friendship like disgusting rental shoes, bowling balls with holes Raven wouldn’t even stick a tree branch into, let alone her hand, and bowls full of half-cracked peanuts that will either kill them or give them superhuman level immune systems.

It’ll probably take a million and one nights like these to get Octavia’s forgiveness back.

“I thought you said we were getting fresh air.” Raven says, looking around for one of the rarely spotted employees to get over to the counter and get them their shoes. Nobody but the old guys from the retirement home league and a couple of bikers smoking up the place from their spots at the pool tables near the concession stand.

“What, you don’t love the smell of Lysol, cigarettes, and boiled hot dog water?”

In some strange way, she kind of does, but that’s got more to do with the fact that she’s spent at least half of her weekends here with Clarke and the rest of their delinquent friends, the alley one of the few remaining places that doesn’t have at least one of them on a lifetime ban. Except for Jasper, thanks to that incident with the claw machine and the roll of Canadian coins their freshman year of high school. Nobody in the alley actually cares enough to enforce it though, and Octavia’s still got the stuffed green dolphin that came out of the whole mess sitting on top of the TV in the dorm.

“Come on, you love bowling,” She does, but unless someone gets over here and gets them their damn shoes, it might be off their card for the night. “Or we can go play Area 51 and try to beat the high score?”

“Nobody’s ever beaten me and Octavia’s score.”

For 6 years now they’ve held the top spot, a victory well-earned after abandoning their friend at the lanes booked for Monty’s birthday, dropping no less than $20 on the game until the letters OAR sat on top of the screen. Every time they come back to the alley, every bit of spare change in their pockets and everyone else’s, goes down the drain, Octavia and Raven dead set on filling every one of the top scores with their initials. This time, she doesn’t even want to check, not even for the sake of reminding herself that nobody is better than her at 90’s era arcade games.

“Hey, I’ll have you know I am very good with a cheap plastic gun.”

“I’m not touching that game.”

“Okay Grumpy Pants, we won’t shoot aliens. We are going to do something though. Moping isn’t going to bring Octavia back any faster.”

“What if nothing brings her back?”

It might be the most pathetic thing Raven’s ever heard herself say, but with every day that Octavia doesn’t come back, it turns into her biggest fear.

“Then she’s an idiot who doesn’t deserve to have someone like you love her.”

“I do not love Octa-“

“Spare me the excuses. I already know. I probably knew before you even did,” Dumbstruck, Raven stares at Clarke, waiting for an explanation. “Nothing gets past me, Raven. Nothing.”

“Except, you know, the fact that your best friends were married.”

“Almost nothing gets past me.”

Clarke did make that weird comment at the party the night they got married, but Raven’s always chalked that up to her being wasted off Smirnoffs and not knowing what she was saying. There’s no way she knew Raven had feelings for Octavia, no matter how close she watched them both.

“You say that like I’ve been making heart eyes at her forever,” Raven looks around, desperate for someone to come by, get her some damn shoes, and let her drown out Clarke’s accusations with the clattering of pins. “Seriously, does no one work in this damn place?”

“Please, you’ve practically been drooling over her since day one,” Clarke starts counting off on her fingers. “That time she showed us she could do a backflip off the monkey bars and then immediately broke her arm. The day she dragged us to go check the varsity soccer roster when it got posted. Oh, and when your jaw nearly fell off when we went skinny dipping that one summer at the lake with the rope swing-“

“Okay, no. I’m calling bull shit, Griffin. One, I was impressed with anyone that could do a backflip, and I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to make heart eyes when someone’s bone is sticking out of their skin. Two, that was a look of pride, especially since she was the first freshman to ever make varsity in the history of Arkadia’s soccer team. And three, I was surprised because I didn’t know Octavia had a sternum tattoo.”

“Yeah, you were really paying attention to the details on her ‘tattoo’ that day.”

“Is there a point to this?” Raven asks, swatting Clarke’s hand away as she tries to pinch her definitely not flushing cheek.

“Yes. This is your intervention to get you to admit that you’re in love.”

“Oh ho, I cannot wait to hear this.” Raven groans as 2 pairs of shoes thump against the counter, Anya grinning on the other side of the counter. As if this conversation wasn’t bad enough, now she has to have it with Anya right across from her.

“How’s it going, Anya?” Clarke greets Anya with a handshake over the counter.

“Can’t complain. Still defiling my favorite cousin?”

“Constantly.”

They really need to find a new bowling alley, one where the owner wasn’t one of Raven’s hook-ups for almost 2 years or one of Lexa’s family members. Raven can still feel the bruise on her thigh from where Lexa punched her during the first dinner held at her and Clarke’s house, seconds after finding out Raven had been sleeping with Anya for weeks now and nobody bothered to tell her. It hadn’t even been Raven’s fault. Anya was the one who decided “Yeah, we’ve met. You walked in on us having sex on the couch before you moved out, remember?” was a great thing to say when Lexa tried to introduce them to each other.

“Clearly you’re good at what you do, Griffin. Keep her happy,” Clarke gives a mock salute while Raven makes a mental reminder that no matter how much she doesn’t want to go back to the dorm alone, she’s never going to be desperate enough to temporarily move in with those two. Her sanity can’t take it. “Now, what’s this about Reyes being in love?”

“Do you ever plan on giving up the Charlie Sheen look?” Raven gestures at the hideous blue and yellow vintage bowling shirt Anya’s sporting, the alley’s logo embroidered on the chest. “Like really, does anyone find it attractive that you get all your clothes from the set of _Two and a Half Men_?”

“Worked on you, didn’t it?” Clarke, ever the traitor, even when she’s trying to make up for being an asshole, laughs at that one. It was not the shirts. It was mostly her and Anya’s constant flirting once Anya took over the place finally hitting a breaking point and turning into a convenient little arrangement. That, and how Raven could usually convince her to make breakfast the morning after, complete with bacon and eggs. Definitely not the stupid, tacky shirts that she somehow always found herself wearing during those breakfasts.

“Go fuck a bowling pin.”

“God, you’re such a romantic. So, who’s the lucky girl you’re sweet talking like that?”

“Nobody.”

“Her wife.”

It’s a good thing Anya’s giving them shoes and not bowling balls, because there’s a high chance one would be crushing into Raven’s skull right about now. Anya drops the can of disinfectant in her hand, throwing the rag she’d been cleaning the shoes with on the counter.

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Anya leans over the counter, looking around and whispering, like the drunks at the pool table will give two shits if they over hear any of their conversation. At least they’re there, in case Anya snaps and someone besides Clarke is needed as a witness to her murder. “You’re fucking married?”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“Clarke, shut up.”

Anya watches them going back and forth, trying to figure out which one she wants to take out first: Raven for withholding some slightly important information, or Clarke for dragging it out of the bag. No wonder her and Lexa are perfect for each other, neither one able to keep their mouths shut about things that probably shouldn’t be revealed in very open, public spaces to parties not directly involved in the situation.

“What? I mean, yeah, you’re getting divorced, but technically on paper you’re still married.”

“You mean the paper that you set on fire?”

“Eh, potato, tomato.”

“That doesn’t even make-“

Anya slaps the counter, bringing a cease fire to Raven and Clarke’s argument over the proper use of idioms.

“You two want to cut the shit and catch me up on how I was apparently sleeping with a married woman?”

“No need to,” Raven shrugs. What’s the point in bringing the whole thing up if the ending still leads to her future ex-wife hating her guts and refusing to ever speak to her or be in the same room as her again? “I’m getting divorced and pretending that this whole thing never happened.”

“Good thing you already have experience with that, right? I mean, it’s not like you acknowledged having a wife the first time we slept together. Or the second. Or the eighty-fucking-ninth!”

“Did you really count how many times we had sex?”

“Not the point, Reyes!” Anya slumps back against the shoe counter. “Jesus, don’t tell me your wife found out and she’s on her way to kill me.”

“She’s not going to kill you. Octavia probably wants to kill me right about now.”

“Octavia?”

Raven nods, knowing the two are all too familiar with each other thanks to those little gatherings hosted by Clarke and Lexa. Familiar, but not fond of each other, thanks to the time Lexa hosted a party for the big Kansas City and Seattle Reign game. Octavia couldn’t keep her mouth shut or her ego in check, yanking Anya’s Amy Rodriguez jersey over her head after Seattle wound up losing.

“Like Blake? You’re telling me that annoying little scab is your wife?” Raven keeps nodding, resisting the urge to defend Octavia’s honor. Anya scoffs, shaking her head. “Well, I guess you two were a match made in cheater heaven.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Lane 16.” Anya points behind Raven, towards the last lane at the far end of the building. Octavia sits on top of the table pushed against the wall, heels of her shoes bouncing back against the pole bolting the table to the ground. Raven can almost hear her laughing from across the room, watching Lincoln come out of a ridiculous spin at the end of the lane, the ball flying from his hand and hooking right into the gutter.

“Thought that little arrangement ended a while ago,” So did Raven, remembering all too well passing up an invitation to Anya’s with a promise of fancy Canadian bacon, all so she could stay up and keep Octavia company after she called things off with Lincoln. 2 straight nights of camping out I the dorm, Octavia constantly avoiding the how’s and why’s of the break-up, only speaking to tell Raven what toppings she wanted on her pizza or what show to put on next. “Then again, I thought you respected the concept of monogamy, yet here we are.”

“Not helping, Anya.”

At least Clarke’s managed to remember she’s supposed to have Raven’s back on this. Someone’s got to be aware of the situation, now that Raven’s stuck staring at Octavia, watching her slap Lincoln on the back after his failed attempt at a trick roll, hopping off the table and picking up her own ball. Classic Octavia peeks out, the ball flying down the lane right into a strike, her years of being the only one in their circle of friends to take the game even remotely serious shining through.

Which is inconvenient, because she could really use an image of Octavia rolling a 12 pound ball straight into the gutter, just for the sake of making the mental image Raven has of said ball smacking her in the face a tiny bit more realistic.

“You do not have the look of someone who wants to divorce their wife.” Raven wipes whatever lovesick look she might have had on her face away, forcing herself to face Anya and not look over her shoulder, knowing Lincoln just pulled Octavia into a bear hug at the end of their lane.

“Because she’s in love with her.”

“Stop saying I love my wife!” Nearly everyone in the bowling alley, save for Octavia and Lincoln, too busy tucked back at their table splitting a plate of nachos to pay any attention to anyone else, turns towards the counter at Raven’s outburst. Anya just shakes her head, back to shining shoes while Clarke grumbles about accepting feelings, taking her shoes and walking away from the counter. “It’s done and over with, and there’s not shit I can do about it.”

“You guys already talked about it?”

Anya asks like it’s the easiest thing in the world, and like Raven’s the biggest idiot on earth for not realizing the solution is right there in front of her. And maybe she is the biggest idiot on earth, but that’s more because she let herself fall in that emotion with her best friend and marry her and live with her and be her damn shoulder to cry on and the person cheering her on at every damn soccer game and basically made Octavia one of the biggest and best pieces of her life.

“I’m taking that dead silence as a no.”

Of course she hasn’t, only because keeping quiet might have been the only shot she had at saving their friendship. A shot she already royally screwed up in the bathroom, making this whole conversation a waste of everyone’s time. It’s over. Done. Finished. Raven might as well start digging a little grave for their cheesy friendship mementos in the courtyard of the dorm. All those friendship bracelets and pictures and, if she ever finds it, her wedding ring, all spending the rest of eternity buried deep in the earth, right next to Raven’s feelings.

“Okay, I’m going to give you some very risky, very radical, completely fucking out there advice,” Raven almost interrupts, going back on her whole spiel about how useless any effort is, especially now that Octavia’s over there probably pulling a Lady and the Tramp with Lincoln and a plate of nachos. Anya grabs Raven’s face in her hands, still slick with polish from the shoes. “Talk to your fucking wife. Get a marriage counselor. Lock yourselves in a god damn bathroom until you talk things out-“

“Yeah, already tried the bathroom thing. That’s why we’re here right now.”

“God, you have the social skills of a toddler. Just cut the shit and tell her how you feel, Reyes. Can’t get any worse than it is now, right?”

Raven wants to throw Anya’s advice back, telling her she doesn’t know a damn thing about her and how clearly she has more than decent social skills if they spent all that time hooking up, but she knows Anya’s right. Considering Octavia probably doesn’t even want to be in the same building as her and would probably duck out the second she realizes Raven’s in the bowling alley too, there’s really nowhere else to go but up. Even if that means digging straight through the center of the earth that she’s currently sitting in with nothing but molten lava around here. That might burn her a little bit less than Octavia flat out turning her back on her.

“That silence means you’re considering it,” Raven groans, wondering just how low she’s sank where she’s taking life changing advice from a former fuck buddy. “Only acceptable form of payment is cash.”

“Can you just let me ignore this for a few minutes before you start charging interest?”

“Yeah, you’re not gonna have that luxury.”

“Why?”

“Because I think Clarke just confronted your wife and neither one looks happy about it.”

Sure enough, Clarke’s as close as she can get to sprinting across the alley in her bowling shoes, Octavia getting held back my Lincoln at the end of the steps. Her hand wraps around Raven’s arm and tugs her towards the door, Anya barking about getting that payment for her life counseling one day. They don’t stop until they’re back in Clarke’s car, breathing heavily and watching the door, expecting Octavia to come after them for intruding on her date with Lincoln.

“What the hell did you do?”

“Figured out a way to save your marriage.”


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And after weeks of procrastinating, we're back! Thank you guys for all the continued support during that little break and for not losing hope on this one. Expect to get back to our regularly scheduled updates soon!
> 
> commandermari.tumblr.com

_“Okay, so we had a slight hiccup with spelling out her name on everybody’s chest-“_

“Clarke, I thought that’s what the posters were for.”

_“No, the posters are for when you write ‘Sorry I have the emotional capacity of a slug!’ Either way, I bribed Lexa and Anya to put on some sports bras and join us-“_

Because obviously the best way to get someone’s wife to not divorce them and leave them forever is to slap some glitter paint on the chest of her former teammate and her wife’s ex-friend with benefits and throw them all in the stands during Octavia’s last soccer game. So foolproof, Raven wonders why she didn’t think of it herself.

_“Oh, and we had to redo the I on Jasper’s chest after the whole waxing incident and I kind of ran out of paint, but it’s good. Miller gave him a purple nurple on his third nipple, but it’s dead center in his chest so it kind of worked out perfect.”_

“Why did I agree to let you plan this?”

_“Because I’m a genius, Raven,”_ A genius that cost Raven an entire morning at the craft store the second the doors open, including a solid smack to the good shin with a little old lady’s walker, one worried she and Clarke would snag those last Christmas decorations on clearance for 90 percent off. Raven props her leg up on her office desk, rubbing the still aching spot. _“I expect some kind of recognition at you and Octavia’s vow renewal.”_

“Got a lot of confidence in your plan there, Griff? Did you forget the way Octavia looked at me back in the dorm?”

Of course Octavia decided to make her first return to the dorm while she and Clarke were there, drowning up to their eyeballs in bags of poster board and puffy paint and streamers. Said steamers almost burst into fire in their hiding spot under the bed, Octavia glaring at Raven as she swapped out pieces of her soccer kit, not even bothering to say a single word to her or Clarke the whole two minutes she was in the room. Worse than the dirty look shot across the bowling alley, worse than the look as Octavia slammed the bathroom door behind her.

_“It’ll be fine, okay? Come on, what girl can turn down someone that brings a whole army to her game asking for forgiveness?”_

“Octavia fucking Blake, that’s who.”

Before Raven gets a chance to spew out her dramatic monologue, Murphy lingers in the doorway, mouthing for Raven to hang up the phone for whatever torturous and pointless conversation he needs to have with her. Probably asking how to forward the phones from the main office to his desk, or how to turn his damn computer monitor on.

“Can I help you?”

She’d prefer not to, even if whatever brain melting crisis he’s in the middle of takes all of thirty seconds and an ounce of brain power to fix. With kickoff 15 minutes away, Raven’s still got a 10 minute drive across campus before she can join Clarke and the others in the apology section of the stadium. Work already made her miss team warm ups, the best moment she had for getting Octavia’s undivided attention, and nothing, not even Murphy’s inability to plug in a mouse without blinding himself with the light, was keeping her in the office another second longer.

“Byrne says to get your ass over to the conference room or you’re not taking home the left over pizza.”

“Why would I go to the conference room?” Raven throws her bag over her shoulder, cringing at the extra weight of a packet of noisemakers sitting in the front pocket, ones Clarke couldn’t fit in what she calls the Emergency Intervention Bag. Shoving murphy out of the doorway, Raven locks it shut behind her. “And why did she send you to tell me?”

“Because she knows the two of us are just the best of friends,” Murphy deadpans, grabbing the handle at the top of Raven’s bag and steering her towards the back of the student life center. “And we have training right now.”

“Yeah, pretty sure I don’t need training. Especially when I only have a week left here until graduation. You, on the other hand, can use all the training you can get,” Raven claps Murphy on the shoulder. “Might want to start with some of those basic computing classes they have for old people so they can stop yelling at their grandchildren about how to check their email or log into Facebook to complain to Wal-Mart about the lack of buggies available or whatever old people complain about.”

“Too far, Reyes. Too fucking far.”

Another attempt to bolt out of the room, but Murphy keeps a grip on Raven’s arm, steering her back towards the conference room. Inside, Byrne scrawls across the whiteboard, talking over her shoulder to a room full of fresh faces, ones that haven’t had the life sucked out of them by countless phone calls from people complaining about conference rooms being booked or parents thinking if they whine hard enough to Raven about the Kappa Kappa Douchebags not letting their precious kid in, like she’s going to walk across campus to go petition for their admission to the president personally.

“What the hell is this?”

“Replacements,” Murphy leads Raven to a row of seats at the back of the room, too far from the pizza table for Raven’s preference. The rest of their coworkers flank them on either side, listening to Byrne go over the same information they heard years ago. “Since practically all of you assholes are graduating, Byrne had to restaff. And now we get to train them.”

“Bull shit. Nobody told me about this.”

“Byrne put notes on all of our doors two weeks ago. Mandatory training and team building exercises, 5 to 9 tonight.”

Raven swears she should have seen that note with how much time she spent banging her forehead against it every day. And she definitely would have just avoided the office for the entire day if she knew she was going to be stuck sitting in a circle doing stupid ice breakers with whatever freshman plans on taking over her office next year. At the least she would have convinced Clarke to step away from the pipe cleaners at the craft store and spend a couple of minutes thinking of a way to get her out of this mess. Maybe a cherry bomb in one of the bathrooms down the hall flooding the floor and forcing them to reschedule. Or smacking Byrne in the back of the head with a bat for having the audacity to schedule training on the night of what might be the most important soccer game of Raven and Octavia’s lives.

She’d come up with more ideas, but Byrne starts glaring at her, and it takes a few seconds for Raven to realize her phone’s going off, Clarke’s name flashing across the screen. Ducking down, Raven feigns ignoring the call, whispering into it the second Byrne turns her back again.

_“Where the hell are you? Octavia’s already doing her pre-game huddle on the sidelines.”_

“Yeah, little problem. I’m stuck at work, and judging by the bitch face Byrne’s throwing at me, I’m not getting out of here.”

_“Not acceptable. I squeezed my tits into a sports bra and drew a giant T on my stomach for this. You can find a way out of that meeting.”_

“Clarke, I swear to fuck,” A shush from the front of the room pull Raven’s head out from between her legs, Byrne ready to chuck a dry erase marker at her head. “Keep your tits covered until I figure something out, okay?”

_“You better, Raven.”_

3 university mandated PowerPoints, 2 stupid icebreakers involving rolls of toilet paper and sticky notes, and a tour around the office that somehow dragged out over half an hour later, Raven takes full advantage of Byrne’s gracious gift of a bathroom break. Holing up outside the student life center, a slew of texts from Clarke await her, ranging from death threats, offers to call in a fake bomb threat on that end of campus, and actual updates on the game.

15 minutes left into the second half and Polis sits at 0 goals, trailing Azgeda’s 1 point. From Clarke’s slightly coherent texts, likely jumbled from Lexa screaming next to her over the complete collapse of her former team against their rivals, Octavia’s off her game.

Maybe it’s better if Raven stays away, if Clarke and the rest of their crew keep their shirts on and the posters tucked under the bleachers. Octavia can’t hate Raven for pulling a stunt that throws her off even more. Raven doesn’t make an even bigger ass out of herself and get her heart broken again. Clarke and the others don’t get arrested for indecent exposure. Everybody wins, except for the whole losing the best friend Raven’s ever had thing.

On cue, Clarke calls, probably letting her know security is dragging them out one by one for scarring several children with the mental image of Jasper’s third nipple that can never be erased. Raven lets it go to voicemail, ready to accept her fate of going back in the office, training Steven or whatever the doofus with the hat’s name is that’s taking over her office how to fill out a reservation slip for a table in the union. Another call stops her in her tracks, Lexa’s name popping up this time.

_“Get here now, Raven.”_

“Not happening, Lex. Look, sorry I made you deal with Clarke convincing you to show up half naked, but there’s no point in this crap.”

_“Yes there is. She’s looking for you.”_

Raven stops in the doorway Byrne waving her back into the conference room. Holding her hand up to buy herself another minute, Raven turns back outside.

“What do you mean she’s looking for me?”

_“An Azgeda player went down, so everyone huddled at the sidelines. Octavia kept looking up at the crowd until she saw us,”_ And probably breathed a sigh of relief when she realized Raven was missing the first home game in all 4 years since Octavia joined the team. _“Raven, she yelled up to us and asked where you were.”_

“Bull shit. She probably just wants to make sure I didn’t get hit by a bus before I signed the papers and she still has to pay for my funeral.”

_“Raven, she looked heartbroken when we said we didn’t know where you were. She wants you here.”_

If she wanted Raven there, she would have said something. She would have walked in the dorm and told her instead of freezing her out, or picked up the phone and said it. Lexa doesn’t know what she’s seeing, even if it’s right in front of her.

“No deal, Woods. It’s not gonna happen.”

_“Put me on the fucking phone,”_ Clarke’s voice carries over the phone, a scuffle with Lexa to get it out of her hands. _“Listen to me. Do you remember the look Octavia had the day that judge said that she was gonna get separated from Bellamy?”_

Raven can’t erase the look from her mind even if she tried. Octavia near tears, only keeping it together because she hated the social worker assigned to their case and didn’t want to cry in front of her. All she could do was turn around and look at Clarke and Raven sitting there with Clarke’s parents, begging one of them to do something to keep her family from getting torn apart more than it already had. Raven felt the ache in her chest that entire day.

_“She looked at me like that again,”_ Like her family was about to get ripped away from her for the second time. Like the only life she’s known was about to go up in flames. Likes she wouldn’t know where to call home if someone didn’t do something to help her. _“There’s 10 minutes left in the half. Get here before she goes back in the locker room.”_

“Reyes!” Byrne calls out as Raven tucks her phone away. Arms spread out, gesturing towards the door, she waits for Raven to make her way back in.

“Sorry, Byrne. But this job can suck it!”

With Byrne still stammering out threats of missing that last paycheck and abandoning her post and failing to be a great mentor to her replacement lackey, Raven shoots off down the hall. Car keys in hand, Raven chases out into the parking lot, not wasting a second to get to the stadium.

 

There must be a law of the universe, one that specifically revolves around Raven herself, that makes it necessary for every idiot driver that could possibly attend a Polis University soccer game to wind up driving in front of her. 10 minutes in the half dwindles to 5, 5 to none, Raven still trying to fight into the parking lot, not even sure she’s going to find a place at all, or if she’ll have to retreat into the parking garage further down the road. The only thing saving her is the extra time at the end of the half that Clarke mentioned.

“Listen you alumni asshole, how about you put some of that education to use and figure out if you want to fucking park here or not?”

College education kicks in as the car in front flips on its blinker, Raven tailgating it as they circle the parking lot. Row after row sits crammed with cars, not a single open spot in sight. Minutes tick away as Raven exits the lot, scanning the sides of the street for anywhere she can throw the car.

A call comes in, the 20th since she left the office, Clarke expecting a foot by foot update on her exact position. Chucking the phone in the backseat while she parallel parks into a spot that might be a smidge too small for her car, Raven catches a glance at the time.

2 minutes. 2 minutes until Octavia walks off the pitch, looks into the crowd, and sees Raven not standing there. 2 minutes until any hope she had about keeping her marriage together go up in flames.

But Raven Reyes does not give up, whether its 20 minutes or 2. And while she’d love to key the ever loving hell out of the car of the alumni asshole who seriously needs his license revoked, she swears revenge for another day, hauling across the parking lot.

Ducking and weaving between cars, the roars of the stadium grow louder. Raven almost makes out the details of the commentary, ticking down the minutes of the game. Polis still trailing, Azgeda stealing the ball every time Polis manages to get a foot on it. Raven can practically feel Octavia seething on the pitch, knowing she’s probably waiting for the second the ref looks away to hit one of the Azgeda forwards with a cheap shot.

Raven pushes through the line still trying to get in the stadium, cursing Polis for having such a damn appealing women’s soccer team. How she plans on getting through without a ticket, Raven has no idea, but a groan from the crowd reminds her that a damn slip of paper that she’s already got a hundred of back in the dorm won’t stop her.

A security guard might though.

“Put me the fuck down on the other side of that gate!” Raven yells, kicking and flailing her arms at the muscled figure holding her back. One of the kids behind her might have gotten a boot to the face, but they’ll understand when they’re older and the only thing keeping them from the love of their life is a very tall, very buff, very tattooed, very familiar security guard.

“Lincoln?”

“Raven? What the hell are you doing?”

She’s not sure what compels her to do it, whether it’s nerves or stress or the nearly lethal amount of coffee in her system from her brief time in Byrne’s training session, but something drives Raven to take a deep breath, stop her fighting in Lincoln’s arms, and look him in the eyes.

“You slept with my wife. She’s about to divorce me. I have to go win her back.”

Whether Lincoln’s a sucker for big romantic gestures or just too surprised to hear he’s been slightly involved in an extramarital affair, he doesn’t say. All he does it put Raven down and let her slip right past him into the gate, bolting down towards the usual spot in the stands her friends take up.

“Raven!” Clarke calls out the second she sees Raven coming down the steps. No time for greetings or grabbing the apology posters they crafted before Raven headed to work not when the only thing Raven sees is a Polis played go down in the middle of the field, an Azgeda player arguing with a ref holding a red card right in her face.

Tunnel vision hits Raven as the player stands, Blake and the number 13 plastered on the back of her jersey, green captain’s armband on her sleeve. A few of Octavia’s teammates run over to help her, steadying her on her feet as the ref calls for a last second penalty kick, the last chance Octavia or Raven might have for the rest of the game.

White Octavia lines up for her shot, Azgeda players forming a wall in front of her, Raven leans onto the barricade of the stands.

“Octavia Blake!”

She screams over the already chanting crowd urging her on. Octavia turns around, and Raven braces herself for another world shattering glare. But it doesn’t come. Surprise hangs on Octavia’s face, waiting for Raven’s next words.

“I don’t want a divorce!” Octavia’s jaw drops, her teammates yelling at her to pay attention to the penalty kick, the Azgeda players looking just as confused. “I want you, Octavia! Make that goal and come home and be my wife!”

Murmurs from their friends erupt around her, questioning Raven and Clarke and everyone for the truth. Clarke shushes them, but Raven can’t even respond. Her eyes stay on Octavia, who gives nothing more than a nod before turning back to the ball.

The seconds tick by, Octavia watching the wall of Azgeda players. Raven feels Clarke and Lexa holding onto her arms, either in anticipation for the shot or worrying that Raven might go hurtling down onto the field herself if Octavia misses.

Raven can’t keep looking, closing her eyes as Octavia takes her steps back. The thud of a cleat on a ball rings out, silence taking over the stadium like every person, Azgeda or Polis supporter alike, holds their breath.

It’s not the cheers from her friends and the crowd around her that brings her back. Or the whistle of the ref as the last seconds tick away in the game. It’s not even the mumbles of the commentators announcing a clean goal right in the upper right corner of the net.

“Raven..”

It’s Octavia climbing up the barricade in front of her, breathing heavy from sprinting across the pitch. For a second, Raven expects Octavia’s hands to fly round her throat, choking her for nearly ruining her moment, dragging her over the wall and down into the pitch with her.

“You mean it?”

“Yeah,” Raven nods, still waiting for something, anything, to come up and ruin her moment, just like every time before. “Yeah, I mean it.”

“God, you’re an idiot.”

Raven’s inclined to agree, but before she can even say another word, Octavia’s lips are on hers, one hand clinging to the wall, the other wrapping around the back of Raven’s neck. Another round of cheers erupts, this time from the circle of friends around them. What Raven thinks might be jasper’s t-shirt, all splattered with paint and left over chest wax, lands on his shoulder, the rest of their group probably just a shirtless behind them, but she doesn’t pay them any mind.

Because Octavia’s here. And maybe, just maybe, they have a shot.


End file.
